


a silver splendour, a flame

by thehandsingsweapon



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Elves, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mages, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-09-21 02:44:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 27
Words: 113,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9528392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: When a magic user's craft fully matures it manifests in the form of a spirit guardian taking the shape of a magical creature. Mages and elves who bear these familiars spend a year traveling through four kingdoms, where they present them to each of the high courts of the aes sidhe throughout the year's festivals. Both Viktor and Yuuri have their reasons for hiding the full extent of their gifts -- Viktor's been hurt before, when his own powers were used against him; Yuuri's been warned that everyone will abuse his gift. The world they live in is one burdened with legacy and expectation; wars fought long ago that linger and divide.So what will happen when Viktor's younger brother, Yuri, comes of age and must travel the wheel, and in doing so, makes two bright stars finally cross?"the edge of the receding glacierwhere painfully and with wonderat having survived eventhis farwe are learning to make fire"- Margaret Atwood, Habitation





	1. a flame in two cupped hands

**Author's Note:**

> This is a world focusing on four Kingdoms of the Elves in the second age; each of those Kingdoms celebrates a particular festival drawn from the Celtic calendar wheel. Take this handy calendar reference, because it's dangerous to go alone:
> 
> East: Imbolc, start of Spring, 1 February  
> South: Beltane, start of Summer, 1 May  
> West: Lughnasadh, start of Harvest, 1 August  
> North: Samhain, start of Winter, 31 Oct

_Pre-dawn, the third day before Imbolc, 1014 II Age_

 

Katsuki Yuuri dreamt of warmth.

It had been the end of a long day when he’d finally laid down for sleep, and there were still longer days ahead. With Imbolc approaching, so were visitors from afar, and that left his family scrambling to attend to the needs of guests of the royal house. _We of Katsuki House,_ his father said, smiling fondly and broadly: _we are the stewards of this place. People come to Hasetsuil for the rebirth of the year, hailing the Spring as she rises out of the east._ They were hosts, helpers; not nobles. Nobility was for the high elves in the citadel spilling up on the hill that stood here, right at the edge of the sea. At its peak, one could look in all four directions; the coast ran north and south for miles, the blue expanse of ocean stretched east, and the grasslands raced away west to the distant steppes, visible only on very clear days. His father was a mage, descended from mages; a whole family who had tended the waters of the healing springs that bubbled nearby for generation after generation. His mother had broken tradition when she’d married him; even for a low elf, marrying a human was uncommon. Yet the clues to it had been in her magic, all warm heat, the kinds of things that stoked the fires of hearth and home and which made her perfectly at home with the clan of city stewards. _We can do something that touches people more directly,_ his mother had murmured, seeing to a long list of festival logistics on behalf of the ruling house. _We are the actual hands and feet that will show these strangers welcome._

Yuuri dreamt of red and gold.

Welcome. Welcome was all well and good; hospitality was a beautiful tradition, all simple, ordinary nobility.It was also exhausting, particularly for Yuuri, who did not open up to strangers the way his mother or sister could, who did not blossom in crowds, but instead felt his strength waning at the precise time in which it was meant to wax with the arrival of spring, as the earth grew stronger. Fortunately it was a problem he only needed to face once a year. It was the season of Imbolc, and on Imbolc, Hasetsuil flew banners of streaming white, pink, yellow, and red, unfurling like giant swaths of sunrise as they flew down from the citadel. Once a year the citizens rose just before dawn and put together fresh crowns of snowdrops, wove them into their hair; and it was with these that they turned to greet the rising sun with dance and song and cheer.

Yuuri dreamt of falling feathers.

The dancing he could do, and had done, every year, as part of the festival, ever since Minako, one of the elves, had seen him at Imbolc as a child and insisted he be brought to the elves to learn the finer points of art. It was an honor, that. Minako was a respected elder at the hall of the arts; knew more about magic and the things which were beautiful than anyone else he knew. Every year to line up for the ceremonial dances of Spring as _her pupil_ was an honor he could only hope to be worthy of, even if he continued to disappoint with magic that, by contrast, only presently emanated little weak bursts of gold, like the very earliest tendrils of dawn. Minako had another student closer to his age, a young elf, and Kenjirou had more faith in him, but that seemed to be part of Kenjirou’s natural mien: he burned with belief, and did not seem to comprehend human pessimism. Together they’d wake up on Imbolc and disperse flower petals ahead of the walking crowds, just in front of the anyone coming to court to present their familiars, and at night they’d be among the first to light candles as the ceremony faded into dusk. Yuuri liked that part, the dancing. Amidst the crowds and the ceremony it offered a certain way to lose himself. He liked the thousand points of candlelight, too. He dreamt of their radiance, of the fragile, mesmerizing flicker of their flame.

At the end of Imbolc it never failed that Yuuri slept like a rock, spent as the fireworks his mother made to delight the Hasetsuil children. _Someday you’ll be the one we introduce with a guardian,_ Mari had told him, six years before, as her _tanuki_ gleefully darted around the house, leaving little pools of mirage magic everywhere for weeks until she got the hang of it.

He dreamt of beating wings, of flying into the sun, and that heat, heat which grew and changed even as he slept, and drifted deeper and deeper into it. Molten gold spun around him, and something soft as red silk, until slowly the warmth which at first had been so welcoming, so inviting, it became a warning, and then it became unbearable, and then, suddenly:

Katsuki Yuuri snapped upright, his sleeping tunic doused in his own sweat, and he knew with a sudden clarity that he was meant to be somewhere else; _needed,_ and so he dressed in silence and stepped out of his family’s hall and onto the streets, to the edge of the plains, where he whistled one of the city’s great eagles under his fingertips — a bird he’d known since childhood, for almost as long as he could remember, and then, before the first rays of light began to brush the horizon, he _flew._ After Mari’s year visiting the great capitals, she’d come back and told him proudly that only Hasetsuil had the great eagles, and that next to no one had believed her little brother had raised up an injured one practically from hatching to adulthood.

Tending to Vicchan had been natural though, logical; he’d seen the little chiclet in the ravaged nest one day with Yuuko and Takeshi, and instinct had insisted that somehow Yuuri Katsuki could fix this, could save this one fragile life. Except the eagle was not so fragile now.

Hasetsuil, the mound overlooking the sea, and its half-circle of thatched huts began to disappear behind him with each confident burst of the great eagle’s wings. The grasslands stretched out below. They were dark at this time of night and, he realized suddenly, possibly dangerous. Traveling with Mari or his parents was a different matter: his parents each knew their own brand of magic intimately, and even Mari’s tanuki, with its special breed of illusion, could prove handy in an ambush against the kinds of forces that tended to stir in the night. Chaotic magic, some of it evil, none of it well understood. Still, the eagle glided on. Vicchan was trustworthy and would keep him safe.

He was bound for the sienna steppes, where the plains ended and the great canyon began, marking the first of several almost impassable divides that separated east from west. Between those two nations stretched a host of desert, practically inhospitable, but running along the eastern side of it was a deep canyon, cut like a scar by a river that had been running for thousands of years. Its rocks gleamed red from the glow of sunrise, lit and shining like fires as he directed the eagle to land, not certain now what exactly it was he was supposed to be looking for, now that he was here.

How many times had he ventured out here with Yuuko and Takeshi against the will of their parents the moment they’d all been old enough to snatch onto eagles and search for adventure? Sometimes Hasetsuil felt small compared to the call of the plains and the fields, where the sun turned wheat to spun gold under its warmth and its heat. They had come up to maturity running wild on the plains together, had their first magical failures, their first unimpressive successes. There was a rock formation called the _Nisgorieth,_ the torch of the East, and they’d raced each other to climb up it, scrambling for footholds and making quick-footed leaps up the boulders. Somehow it had felt harder as a child to take the jumps he made now: the monument had loomed large in his mind, insurmountable, and now it was a short scramble to the top where he knew he’d be able to see for miles in all directions, looking out at the mouth of the canyon and the steppes and mesas on the horizon ahead, a jagged scar of red and gold that stretched westwards.

There, seated as though he’d been waiting for some time, was an old man. No, Yuuri realized, that wasn’t quite right. This man was ageless, somehow, as though well beyond the concepts of youth or time. In his cupped hands burned a subtle, waning fire, more smoke than it was flame. He looked up and met Yuuri’s gaze with eyes that were molten gold. _We were beginning to wonder if anyone would come,_ he said, though Yuuri was certain that his mouth hadn’t moved. Under this great gaze he felt feverish again, and utterly transparent, as though something had flown into him and was rattling around through his bones, could hear and sense his thoughts.

It was hard to distinguish whether or not the thrumming noise he heard was his heartbeat — too quick, surely, too unsteady — or the beating of wings.

 _I’m not sorry for this,_ came the voice, for the last time, and the last thing Yuuri remembered about any of it was the oncoming rush of glorious, vermillion wings and the impression of an all-consuming tower of flame.

He woke to the cool feel of the eagle’s beak against his cheek, alone on Nisgorieth, and the sound of a melodic chirp not entirely unlike the crystal bells kept in Minami Hall: tiny and light and clear as the dawn. Yuuri looked down and there, nestled into his sternum, was the sparkling outline of a small carmine chick. It chirped again, and shimmered gold as it rustled on his chest, and beyond it the setting sun began to sink into the horizon as the eagle nudged him with greater urgency.

He came to his feet slowly, cupping the tiny heat of his new spirit familiar into the palm of one hand, where the little bird curled up, appeared to go to sleep, and then disappeared in a fragile wisp of smoke. The man from earlier was gone; no trace of him remained in any of the directions Yuuri looked out from. “Okay, Vicchan,” he murmured, the words sticky and clunky in his mouth. It had been foolish, perhaps, to come so far without a waterskin. Something about the morning had felt too urgent to ignore. Like the flight ought to this place was the one thing he couldn’t _not_ do.

“Let’s go home.”

Flying into Hasetsuil, though, was another matter; guard whistles arose and as he landed, late in the evening, Mari’s _tanuki_ came flying around the corner to stare him down. It beat his sister by mere seconds.

“Yuuri! Where in the four kingdoms have you been?”

Strange of her to even ask. The familial bond between his house kept Mari, his mother, his father always on the peripheral edge of Yuuri’s consciousness; almost like little constellations of light he could search for in the darkness of his person, certain of where they were and how they were doing. He blinked away confusion. “… I took Vicchan out for a ride to the steppes this morning?” The giant eagle fluffed his wings and made off on his own, leaving Yuuri to face his sister, his arriving parents, and a growing crowd of curious mages and elves alike. On his own feet he felt suddenly weak, hit with uncommon hunger.

“Yuuri,” This was Takeshi’s voice, coming out of an array of guards. He’d been selected to be one, after all; would be marching with them for the first time this year. “You’ve been gone since yesterday.”

“That’s not —“ One step, then two. It was Mari who caught him in her arms. “— possible.”

“He’s burning up,” Mari muttered, pressing a hand to Yuuri’s forehead. “Help me get him to the halls of healing.”

 

\- - -

 

He dreamt of great fires, of the leap and flicker of flame.

_Chirp, chirp._

Yuuri woke again to the feel of something cool and damp over his forehead, and when he blinked to clear his vision he was rewarded with Minako’s face, worried but stern. “There, Kenjirou. He’s waking up.” She smiled, albeit thinly. “Perhaps he’ll still join you for tomorrow’s dance after all. Now, take this bowl back to the Healers for me, if you would, and close the door once you’re on your way out …”

“Can’t I stay and talk to him?”

“There will be plenty of time to talk to him tomorrow.” This was the voice of Hasetsuil’s great teacher of the arts, and it boded no argument. Kenjirou took the bowl and snuck off in a sulk that might’ve drawn a smile from Yuuri if he hadn’t felt so tired, all of a sudden.

“Allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your familiar, Yuuri,” Minako said carefully, certain now that he was awake. Then he felt the lurch of her magic:

_Such a surprise. Never in all my days did I expect to see you carry the phoenix._

Mind-magic. It came so easily to the elves; his mother had explained that much, but he hated it. It always felt invasive. Even the family bond among Katsuki House troubled him sometimes; as though at any moment someone would slip into his consciousness and discover the ever wheeling, ever churning chaos of its state. Would take the full measure of him and realize it didn’t account for much.

He swallowed down his panic. Minako had known him for years; there was nothing left that the high elf could see that she probably hadn’t already perceived one way or another. _I don’t understand._

“I will teach you,” she said, out loud. “How to use it.” _Promise me one thing, Yuuri._

_What?_

_Don’t call it the phoenix. If anyone asks, your guardian is the vermillion bird._

“You must understand this, Katsuki Yuuri, before anything else. They will come for you.”

“W-who?”

“Everyone.” Minako smiled but it was sad, and she laid a hand over his wrist. "Even the elves are not fully invulnerable. Some will reach the end of their road and still thirst for more life. They will come to you then. Can you give it to them? Should you?"

 

\- - -

 

_Approximately three years later. Six weeks to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

Multiple moons had come and gone since Yuri’d had the privilege of walking underneath the intricate gates of Mosciren and then made the steady spiral climb up the mountain to his father’s house. The city was as impressive and intimidating as he’d left it; even memory didn’t do its ancient intricacies justice. The first of the four capitals of the four kingdoms, Mosciren; the silver gem of the north. Certainly the silver beeches that shivered overhead had something to do with it; that and the silver ore that was wrought out of the mountain. Yakov could bend stone as though it was reed; there was nothing here that he had not in some way woven or shaped. The Alcazar itself rose out of the mountain like it had been a living, breathing thing once; and perhaps it had, back when he’d loved Lilia the first time, had built this place as a monument for her. In the winter snows would come and make it an even starker place of grey and white; Samhain would mark the transition to that time of year, where the world lay crystalized and dormant.

He’d been further south in the kingdom, tending to his training with his mother, was forever frustrated by his lack of progress. It had been his older brother’s call, across the edges of his consciousness, which Yuri finally answered: _come back to Mosciren and take a rest. You may find inspiration here._

Easy for Viktor to say. Viktor commanded the white stag, a familiar so famous it had been the symbol of the north for generations. Water and ice trickled from his brother’s fingertips with delicate, breezy ease, as though magic had never been particularly difficult for him. He was famous for it now. Mages traveled for miles on the sheer chance of his advice, and Viktor was terribly elitist when it came to his students, selecting only the very best.

_I’m a century older than you, Yura._

_Shut up, Vitya._

Silver bemusement drifted his direction across the bond of brothers, like cold silver bells, and Yuri scowled as he finally arrived at the gates, unsurprised to find that he had a chance to display his displeasure directly to its source. There stood Viktor, flower-crowned for spring, wearing a distant smile as the breeze toyed with the long strands of his hair. He seemed obvious to the stark contrast drawn by the man he stood next to; someone Yuri realized with a start that he did not recognize.

“This is Otabek,” Viktor murmured, gesturing to the dark elf who stood next to him. Viktor, who was silver-robed, long-haired; who created an illusion of delicacy and grace — it would be a mistake to think him fragile, or to underestimate his strength, but Otabek _exuded_ it. Otabek’s hair was black as night and cut short, shaved at the edges like the —

_Yes, he’s been away on the ranges._

So he’d fought the abominations lingering on the borderlands then. Yuri squashed his curiosity, and inclined his head to acknowledge the greeting.

Otabek barely moved in response, still and impassive as a tower of onyx. It was Viktor who broke through silence again, smirking subtly and thinking so loudly that Yuri wanted to hit him: some joke about _cracking the ice —_

“How is mother?”

“She sends her regards,” Yuri murmured, and his smirk blossomed, vicious. “Just to you. Father she says can continue to freeze in the depths of seven hundred more winters.”

Wasn’t that always the way, Viktor thought, bemused. Lilia and Yakov were opposing forces; the mountain and its trees. He stayed here, in the high halls of the mountain ranges; she wandered the evergreen woods, oversaw the lower settlement on the pass — _Ast Petyriel_ , the place he’d been born, and where he’d stayed for much of his childhood, evidently out of his mother’s spite. He, too, traveled there sometimes; the stag preferred the winter woods to the mountain’s peaks when the snows came. He supposed it was in his nature to give chase. Perhaps now, with Yuri back in Mosciren, their places could switch for a time.

“Come inside, little brother,” Viktor said, and clasped Yuri on the shoulder then. It was something like affection. Every year it got a little harder to remember when Viktor had been different, _more naive,_ whispered the voice, silver and cold; _kinder,_ Yuri thought to himself, kept in the private spaces his brother couldn’t reach even with all of the magic of the legendary lucky stag, “You can tell him that directly.”

“See you around, Otabek.”

“… Mmn.”

 

\- - -

 

At night, Viktor humored him, and they climbed to the highest tower and lay on their backs, looking at the stars.

“Did you know you were going to be the stag, Vitya?”

“I did not. I thought I’d let it —“

“Surprise you,” Yuri finished with a snort. “Of course.” How appropriate for his brother, whose guardian was widely believed to bring more than snow and ice, but also luck, in its purest form. To devastating result. That was the story they didn’t tell, the time they never spoke of. “What was it like?”

Viktor smiled his distant, heart-shaped smile, and laid a hand on his chin. He’d this part of the story plenty of times before; might as well pretend again that they hadn’t already had this discussion. “I had dreams,” he said, “for months.” He knew the ancient traditions of the hunt, imagined snapping dogs hot on his heels. “More than once I woke up with my cheek smarting, like it’d been scratched by a branch…”

“Mm.” It was a little uncharacteristic, this reply from Yuri, whose non-magical ability seemed to be centered on his ability to always come up with a clever response. Then he said this: “I want to be like the snow leopards,” he said. “Sleek and silent and deadly. Nothing in the forest comes for them.”

Viktor turned his head, and looked over at his brother, lying still, his hair a faint halo of spun gold.

“Perhaps,” he said, then. “You never know.”

That night, Yuri dreamt of hooves, and of the silver light of the moon. He dreamt of the twinkling of bells.

Of starlight, and something fragile, something delicate. It was white as his brother’s stag but different.

It did not feel cold or distant.

 _Hope_ was the word he woke up with, _like hope._


	2. the edge of the receding glacier

_Five weeks, six days to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

There was no more magical sight than fog rolling in over the high peak above Mosciren, coming over the ridge to wrap the mountain in silk and wool. Patchy fog had been the course of the evening; hasty clouds that drifted between the earth and the stars, which even now threatened to obstruct the perfect circle of moonlight overhead. Yuri stood barefoot on the summit, with no recollection of how he’d come outside or why he stood where he stood now, looking over the Alcazar in his sleeping robes.

Except that, now that he was outside, he did not much feel like going in. The sound of hoofbeats still haunted him, though whether they followed his steps or if he was drawing nearer, it was impossible to say. He had the strange, curious sense of climbing, of the work it took regular mortals to get to this peak. Elves were lithe and light and he balanced on the treachery of the pass without care and without fear.

Breath warmed his shoulder, and when Yuri turned into it, because that seemed the most natural, obvious thing to do, he stared into two large, dark eyes; big and soulful and deep.

 _A unicorn._ To rest his hand on the horse’s white nose, below the incandescent sheen of the horn, seemed the most natural thing in the whole world to do, but the answering whinny shook him from sleep, into a reality where the outline of the same creature hovered at the edge of his bed, nosing just beyond the edge of the sheers laced into twisted bits of birch and willow.

A unicorn. His heart beat as fast as those running hooves:

“I thought I told you to be a snow leopard,” Yuri murmured, reaching up to rub sleep from his eyes, and it must have been the wrong thing to say, because already the horse was backing up, shimmering, becoming less and less something he could believe was real.

“Wait! I didn’t mean it —“

But with one last starlit twinkle, it was gone.

 

\- - -

 

 _Predictable._ This was the one word Yuri might’ve used for the process of watching his brother practice archery in the long salle of their father’s hall, only half listening to the stretch of the bow and snap of its string, never failing to be rewarded by the answering thud of an arrow hitting home in the sweet heart of the target. There was no better archer than Vitya, for no other reason than it would’ve been literally _impossible_ to beat him, so long as he had the luck of the stag on his side. Even without magic he was formidable; the challenge the bow presented was the sort of thing Viktor could never have backed down from: the coming together of a dozen different calculations about distance and the speed of the wind and the movement of a target.

The finesse of it. The cold, angry art. As though he were the hunter and not bearing the very emblem of the hunted.

From time to time even Viktor seemed bored, and then he’d sometimes honor Yuri with a lesson in something else. Fencing, perhaps. Even there, though, it was difficult to outmatch Viktor’s longer reach, infuriating to realize that when he scored it was because his brother was purposefully held back, actively preventing the interference of his own magic. Then Viktor would smirk at him subtly, and gesture someone else in, a stand-in for Yuri’s flashes of temper. Today that was Otabek, their newest Captain of the Guard, who swept a long-staff under Yuri’s legs for the second time and knocked him to the floor without warning or ceremony. They’d been fighting for what felt like an hour, though there was no way it could possibly have been that long, and Yuri’s forearm hurt from each stroke he’d deflected with a shield, and his swordhand trembled, wrist weak from impact after impact.

The dark elf offered him a hand to get back on his feet, impassive, unreachable. Nothing seemed to phase Otabek and that was infuriating, too. Viktor had evidently seen enough. “You want to tell me what this is all about, Yura?”

 _I found my familiar,_ he thought, irritably. There was a way to think words across the family bond between them in a way that could send them like daggers, an art Lilia had demonstrated time and time again in her cold conversations with their stoic father. He tried, and failed, not to think about the unicorn itself, but it was too late: Viktor’s curiosity was piqued and now he was walking over to study his younger brother. Heedless of the sword, or the shield, for that matter, he hooked his fingers under Yuri’s chin and lifted his face up for inspection.

“But you can’t summon it,” Viktor concluded after a moment, and he let go. Yuri’s eyes narrowed and he gave chase with the flat part of his blade, eager to repay his older brother for making such an admission in front of someone else, even if Otabek’s impassive face revealed absolutely nothing, even if he seemed the sort who could promise to take a secret to the grave and mean it. Viktor, with liquid, infuriating grace was already out of his reach, and threw back the shower of silver hair, fixing Yuri with a cold sapphire gaze that was unsympathetic. “What did you do?”

“Why do you always jump to a conclusion that everything is my fault?”

“Because you usually prove me right,” Viktor murmured tersely. “Here you are still, throwing a fit like it’ll get you what you want. Magic doesn’t work that way, Yuri. Time to grow up.”

“Oh, here we go.” Yuri advanced on him now, working his way back across the room. Otabek glanced at his brother for orders, which was infuriating, too. “High Prince Viktor thinks I need to live up to his standards,” he snapped. “Like that’s easily done, living in the shadow of the most famous elf in all of the four kingdoms. The lucky stag! Catch it and it grants your wishes, makes all your dreams come true.” He dropped his sword, drawing a pool of magic to hand, a swirl of white light, and threw it, forcefully, across the room at Viktor, who raised his hands to form a shield of crystalline ice.

The light hit it and crystals of ice shattered and fell around Viktor’s feet, like glass slivers, like snow. Yuri felt the malice in his smile grow. He hadn’t been able to do _that_ before, had only ever managed spells with fragile little wisps of light. “Careful he doesn’t take you and your whole country to _war_ afterwards though. He’ll win. He always wins. He can’t _not_ lose.”

It was a sensitive topic. The one weapon he had that he knew always struck home, the thing that would make Viktor’s blue gaze turn brittle. Except now Otabek stood between them. “Enough,” he said, quietly, his back to Viktor and the focus of his gaze on Yuri.

“Why dredge up the ghost of the past?”

“I imagine you know a thing or two about ghosts, don’t you?” Yuri looked up at Otabek, both his brows raised. “Banshee.”

“Yura, that’s _enough._ ” Viktor stepped forward, readying something that might smooth over this breach of protocol. Otabek’s distinctive looks; the way he stood out among the elves of the north, it was all _obvious._ Otabek was looking at him now and didn’t even seem wounded, which was disappointing; Yuri wanted to break _something_ and Otabek had been standing there, convenient.

It wasn’t that he cared about the old stories, the really ancient ones that talked about all the elvish clans, the high kings and their misunderstood brethren, who preferred to walk in night. He didn’t. Viktor might’ve; Viktor was judgmental and classist, too accustomed to all the power and privilege he’d been born into. What Viktor cared about at present was that it was considered rude to call this difference between them out so directly. _Callously,_ his brother argued; and Yuri resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The truth stood before him, impassive, unbreakable; why pretend differently.

“It’s fine,” Otabek murmured calmly, “Go.”

Strange, that Viktor would heed the words of a banshee, but he did just that, leaving Yuri alone in the salle with Otabek and the sinking feeling of failure; of having come here to learn and still _accomplishing nothing._ Two fingers brushed his cheek, set the blond of his hair back behind one pointed ear. “What are you so angry about that it’s worth trying to break everything?”

“I was going to finally show him,” Yuri muttered, glaring at the doorway Viktor had disappeared through.

“Show him what?”

Indeed. Yuri pursed his lips, trying to match words to the feelings that had lingered between him and Viktor for his whole life, growing up in the long shadow of the stag’s legend. Except it wasn’t even a shadow, really; it was white, and frozen, and cold.

Yakov’s second son; the other prince; an irrelevance.

“That he’s not untouchable.”

“I think he knows that already,” Otabek said, not unkindly, and maybe it was something about the words, or something about the way it was Otabek delivering them, stoic and calm, that made Yuri almost, for a moment, believe him.

 

\- - -

 

“Hey, get back here, you —“ _That_ was the voice of Mari, chasing down her tanuki guardian as it bolted around the corner and into Yuuri’s room with a four-tailed fox on its heels.

“Yuuri!” _That_ was the voice of Kenjirou, another one of Minako’s pupils, evidently hot on her heels. Both of them burst into Yuuri’s room as he leaned forward and snuffed out the candle he’d been focusing on, whatever focus the meditation asked for shattered by this interruption. The raccoon raced up the maple branches that made up his bed, stopping just out of reach of the fox he didn’t recognize. “Yuuri, look!” Kenjirou was ecstatic, grinning nearly ear-to-ear as he reached over, scooping up the orange bundle of light that had evidently shattered this morning’s peace at Katsuki House. “I got my guardian last night,” he crooned, burying his nose into the impression — it wasn’t fully corporeal, after all — of softness and fur. Never, Yuuri thought, had he seen such a close physical resemblance between spirit guardian and master. He found himself smiling in spite of himself. “Isn’t it great?”

Mari snapped her fingers for the _tanuki,_ who leapt in one sure leap onto her shoulder and then vanished there with little more than a curious wave, as though it had never been in the first place. On the windowsill his phoenix preened its feathers in the sunlight, glorious and scarlet. _You always look your best this time of year,_ Yuuri thought fondly, momentarily distracted by the bird. “That is great, Kenjirou.” Kenjirou was a late bloomer; had been waiting with baited breath and thinly veiled impatience for this moment for as long as Yuuri had known him. “What does Minako have to say about it?”

“She’s pleased. Keeps telling me to take it easy, but look!” Kenjirou rubbed his hands together and then pulled them apart, revealing a bell between his two hands. “I can conjure things,” he said, beaming, as he lifted the bell and rang it with a broad smile. “… Of course none of it lasts very long,” he admitted, as each of three rings sounded weaker and weaker until the bell vanished from between his fingers: “but I’ll get better, like you did.”

Yuuri wasn’t sure he’d gotten _better_ at all. There were the obvious things, of course; he could come through fire dancing, now; had no trouble, whatsoever, pulling heat to his fingertips. In the one, obvious, troubling matter: the one that loomed every Samhain; he’d made no progress.

That first year had been _awful._

Kenjirou showed no signs of slowing down: “ — Plus I get to go on the wheel now! Minako’s going to draw the straws for who all is coming along with me,” he added cheerfully. “I hope she picks you! It’s a shame you never got to finish your trip.”

Yeah. A shame. That’s what it had been: to have fallen so ill on the road to Mosciren that his family had skipped Samhain entirely, and brought Yuuri home without the last festival entirely.

And then what came after …

He looked at the phoenix, so bright and beautiful now. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Yuuri swallowed and put on a smile, aware that Kenjirou was looking at him now, bright-eyed and hopeful. “Yeah,” he replied gently. “We’ll see what she says.”

 

\- - -

 

The community ceremony, later, chose seven of them, and his name was one of them. “These seven will represent Hasetsuil as they accompany Kenjirou of Minami house to the other three capitols for introductions at court,” said Minako. Takeshi. Yuuko. He could be glad of that, at least. Then his own name. Bound with it, Yuuri already knew, was another: _Seung-gil._

“You two already know each other?” Seung-gil wasn’t easy to talk to, but it hadn’t stopped Kenjirou from trying. There weren’t many people in the East like him, and his familiar was a big, scary, three-headed dog: enough to send Kenjirou’s fox hiding behind his heels, though Yuuri’s vermillion bird hadn’t so much as blinked.

Seung-gil did not smile. “After a fashion.”

Yuuri shivered, and pulled his cloak closer in the darker part of the night. “Seung-gil helped out last year when I got sick,” he said, which was a way of telling the absolute truth and a damnable lie at the same time. _Seung-gil is there every time I get sick._

They were bound together, it seemed, two sides of the same blessing, the same curse.

Kenjirou didn’t notice. “Any friend of Yuuri’s is a friend of mine,” he decided, and then knelt to look at the three-headed hound:

“Can I pet your dog?”

It was a question Seung-gil clearly had never expected to answer, and Yuuri, in spite of himself, gave into laughter. It was better than the alternative, after all; than worrying too much today about a fate they both knew wasn’t due for months.

“Did I miss the joke, Katsuki?”

“Lighten up,” Yuuri quipped with a mild smile.Here he was, cracking jokes with Hasetsuil's only banshee. Spring would bring summer and these were his months; months where he felt strong, in his element even. “It won’t kill you.”

Seung-gil’s lips twitched. It wasn’t a smile; but it might’ve been a start.

 


	3. a single vowel in this metallic silence

_Five weeks, five days to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

Viktor wasn’t speaking to Yuri and Yuri wasn’t speaking to Viktor and this would have been _fine_ if it wasn’t for Yakov losing his temper in the morning as Mila broke bread. _Ridiculous_ had been the word he’d used, lambasting each of his sons in turn for their pride and stubbornness before the meal was even over. It’d been hard to take too much satisfaction in hearing Yakov lecture Viktor about his _lack of compassion_ when the ancient elf’s ire had swiftly turned in his own direction. _Too much like your mother, Yura. It’s time to grow up._

He’d gone for a walk after that, taking his time in scaling the highest peak of Mosciren, footfalls light on what little remained of spring snow. The days would grow longer until all the snow had melted, fueling a chain of waterfalls that followed the river all the way down to Ast Petyriel. Yuri took that path back down in part because it was the road Viktor loved; he was drawn to water in all of its forms, and to listen to the early bubbling of runoff was as good a reminder as any that underneath his parade of perfection even Vitya had a beating heart; and as careful as he’d been for as long as Yuri had known him to wall it off there were still things it loved.

Back at the Alcazar there was a folded note on his bed, unsigned, but he would’ve recognized the neat, impeccable lines of Viktor’s hand anywhere: _Father says I’m to accompany you on the wheel. We leave for Hasetsuil in two days; we’ll travel with their contingent._

What mattered more were the things that weren’t said, which was typical of his brother: Viktor had evidently taken it upon himself to inform Yakov about Yuri’s familiar, though he could assume he’d spared the part of the story where it had gone _missing._ Taking the pass east to Hasetsuil meant they weren’t traveling due south for Beltane. Viktor might’ve argued this would spare them from encounters with abominations and stray forces in the desert; the truth was more complicated: in the desert wastes, his stag would struggle, deeply isolated from one of its elements, and Viktor’d be weak as a result.

More than any of that: Viktor was agreeing to go west for the first time in Yuri’s entire life. Since the end of the war. Since the time when he’d learned just how dangerous it was, to have the ability to grant wishes.

Yuri reached into the family bond, searched for the silvery threads that marked his brother’s cool consciousness. _Apology accepted._

Vitya thought nothing back, but Yuri thought he detected something like a wry, flickering bemusement, and that was enough; it would do.

 

\- - -

 

_Four weeks, three days to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

They traveled south from Mosciren through Ast Petyriel on foot; Viktor and Mila, Yuri and Otabek. For a moment, Yuri thought he might’ve escaped his mother’s inquisition while she was distracted welcoming Viktor back to his hometown, but he was gravely mistaken: no detail escaped Lilia’s sharp green eyes, and even as she took Viktor for a walk through the heartwood the sharp bend of her thoughts drifted back to her younger son.

_Are you going to tell me what it is, at least, Yura? Vitya says you won’t tell him._

He shut her out before the memory of the unicorn could flash into his consciousness and bleed into the family bond. Then: _… it’s a unicorn._

_A unicorn? How extraordinary._

He’d cut the conversation short, then, sitting out on the roof of his mother’s hall amidst a starless sky; clouds had come in, and with them the promise of rain, which was only going to please Viktor as they traveled onwards through the woods. It had not felt extraordinary, the spirit that had come to him. It had felt delicate, fragile, weak even.

When it was time to depart, Lilia added one more traveller to their party, Georgi, making passive mention of some heartache he’d recently endured at the hands of a mage girl. Not that Yuri hadn’t already heard the story: he’d been stuck sitting next to Georgi at dinner, and so he’d already gotten the full tale, delivered with mournful pluck by the heartbroken elf. _I would have bonded with her,_ he’d complained, and Yuri’d glanced across the table at Viktor, who was doing a terrible job feigning disinterest. “Get yourself together, Georgi,” he’d muttered. “You’re not the only one who’s had your heart broken.”

 _Maybe he is,_ Viktor had thought, at the time, careful to veil his thoughts. He had not been like this, _then._ He’d been glacial fury; he’d been a tower of unforgiveness; he’d gone to war and won until the debt was paid in full.

“We’ll be glad to have you,” chirped Mila, who could pretend to make good news out of just about anything. Then thunder clapped overhead and Viktor was first to excuse himself; no doubt, Yuri knew, to sleep outside in his element, exposed to the storm.

“Don’t mind my brother,” he explained dryly. “He’s crazy.”

Lilia gave them horses and provisions the next day, entrusting a package to Otabek as they set off through the woods in a gentle rain. She kissed Viktor’s forehead, and then Yuri’s, stooping to cup his chin with two narrow fingers:

 _Don’t underestimate beauty,_ her thoughts echoed, leaving him with plenty to think about on the long ride: _Beauty is a crushing force of righteousness._

The forest would carry them to the northern mouth of the great canyon that separated east from west; from there they’d proceed along the coast until they arrived at Hasetsuil. Viktor was intolerable as they emerged from the woods to the coast: his blue eyes shone, a perfect reflection of the sea, and his stag charged ahead of the party, chased by Mila’s mischievous weasel. More than once Yuri thought he detected a near-smile from Otabek, and wondered whether or not the banshee could ever be caught in a genuine laugh.

“What’s your guardian, anyway?”

“Mine?” Otabek shook his head slowly, and nudged his horse on. “When you can show me yours,” he murmured with a glance backwards, raising an eyebrow at Yuri, “I’ll show you mine.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Strange, what that almost-smile did to him, thrown so carelessly over one shoulder. “I expect no less.”

 

\- - -

 

_Three weeks, six days to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

It must’ve been just before sunrise. Viktor woke to the sound of waves, the purplish light of pre-dawn trickling in through the tent. It wasn’t far to Hasetsuil now; he’d been able to make out the lone hill on the horizon as the sun set on the previous day, before they’d stopped to make camp. Experience told him he was the first one awake; Yuri had an unusual preference for twilight, and Otabek, though he’d never said so in as many words, was likely more attuned to nighttime than he was to the peak of day. Mila would come to perhaps shortly after sunrise, and Georgi, still nursing his heartbreak, would reluctantly close out their party. It didn’t matter. They were close enough now; he could let all of them sleep for a little while longer.

Besides, it meant a morning spent with the sea. The white stag leapt ahead of him as he made his way down to the beach, and strolled barefoot into the morning tide. Further South the outline of Hasetsuil could be seen more clearly, outlined against a growing golden light on the horizon. The ocean’s water was cold, but the waves leapt upwards, curling around the stag as it danced across the incoming tide.

The cry of an eagle in the distance caught his attention, and he watched and marveled at the dance of two great birds — _one of the eagles, no doubt —_ and ribbons of gold and scarlet, showers of sparks and flame as the sun rose behind the second bird.

It was the most elegant magic he’d ever seen. Standing waist deep amidst the incoming waves, fingers over his mouth, all Viktor could do was watch.

The stag had ideas of its own, and burst forward in a stream of silver, white, and blue, leaping and darting over the crashing waves towards the ribbons of fire and light.

Towards Hasetsuil.

There was nothing he could do but follow.

 

\- - -

 

The phoenix saw the streak of silver and pale blue before Yuuri ever did, and darted down to the water, leaving him no choice to follow. There along the waves raced a white stag, crystalline, full of light, and as Vicchan dove to the ground he leapt off, calling the bird back to his shoulder.

A man with silver hair and the bluest eyes he’d ever seen rounded the far curve of the beach.

“What was that?”

Minako’s words came back to him, suddenly:

_They will come for you. Everyone._

It had been foolish, perhaps, indulging the familiar's whims, but the song of sunrise on a clear day like this one was too strong to resist. There had been no denying the phoenix’s drive to fly, to dance, to sing. There, somewhere, was Minako’s wisdom too: _life itself is a kind of dance, Yuuri; no wonder it called you._

“Sorry,” he apologized, and put on a careful smile, a polite one. Minako had also been expecting guests; princes of the North, and with the stag standing in the water in front of him now there was no doubt who this could be. Yakov and Lilia were the first generation of the second age; their sons … “I’m not quite sure what you mean.” Yuuri shrugged his shoulders and with the motion the phoenix chirped and disappeared in a soft plume of golden smoke.

“I’m not one to be trifled with,” Viktor murmured carefully. “There was magic. I saw it. Was that you?”

Those blue eyes were dangerous.

“I know who you are,” Yuuri admitted, and he recalled his manners, folded an arm over his chest and bowed. “High Prince of the North. Minako’s been expecting you; Lilia sent a message through the wayseeing stones. Where is the rest of your group?”

Viktor was close now; too close, and he pressed two fingers under Yuuri’s chin, inspected him in a way that made Yuuri feel transparent. The possibility of being seen so clearly, so neatly: that was terrifying.

“… You’re a halfling,” Viktor murmured, utterly surprised. “How curious.”

 _Halfling._ It was enough to ruffle feathers, and Yuuri looked away, stepped back under the protection of one of Vicchan’s wings.

“My family are the stewards of Hasetsuil,” he said, ignoring the waver in his own voice as he said it. What difference did it make if his father was a mage? His mother was an elf. He’d been good enough to be Minako’s pupil. Of course, Minako herself had studied long ago with Lilia, who was Viktor’s mother, and suddenly everything between them made far too much sense. _Just a halfling. And he’s High Prince._

“I apologize,” he murmured next. _Remember your place, Yuuri._ “I’d be happy to show you and the rest of our guests to the city as soon as its convenient, my lord.”

Curious, the way resolve had been in the halfling’s dark eyes one moment, and wavered in the next. Had he been the cause of that? “You don’t have to call me that,” Viktor decided without hesitation. “My _name_ is Viktor.”

“… Yuuri. Yuuri Katsuki.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> keeping chapters somewhat short so the flow of the story stays consistent. 
> 
> next time: how yuri gets his groove back (tm)


	4. those red heart-shaped vacancies on the page

_Three weeks, six days to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

It had been, Viktor decided, far too long since he’d rested a while in Hasetsuil’s hot springs, which had a sweet-smelling mineral that cleared the mind and a fierce heat which healed the body. Minako sat nearby, one leg dangling into the spring he’d immersed himself in after the stewards settled them into guest quarters. So far he’d been able to ascertain that Yuuri had a sister with a mischievous raccoon familiar, a mother and a father with kind, ordinary faces; nothing whatsoever that would explain what he was certain he’d seen at sunrise. Yuuri had remained tight-lipped and polite as they gathered the rest of the northerners, and then, Viktor suspected, he’d used the eagle as an excuse to keep his distance, flying above and slightly ahead of their racing horses.

“… So you’re really not going to tell me anything about him.”

Minako’s smile was a little crooked as she nursed a cup of mead. “He’s my best pupil,” she said. _My brightest._

“Your best pupil is a halfling?” Viktor glanced over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow as though to ask what the high elves of Hasetsuil were doing with their time while a mage’s son outshone them in the eyes of their elder.

Then again, the world of Hasetsuil was softer, younger. All of the oldest things were in Mosciren. The Easterlings were newer, Yakov said; even the earth upon which they walked was coming of age. Then again, to Yakov, by comparison, almost everything was new. _Fresh,_ came the word, unexpectedly, and Viktor turned his head to look at the steam, watching it shift until his stag came darting through on the surface of the water, punching new holes in the rising vapor. He did not have to be looking at Minako to feel her smile. “… The world works in mysterious ways, Viktor. Some things may yet surprise you.”

There was truth in that, at least. “I assume you’re taking the eagles down the southern road to Shen-Osheth?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. With you here we’ll take a ship.”

Viktor’s eyes lit up. A week on the open sea.

“It means less trouble on the southern edge of the wastes,” Minako murmured, as though she hadn’t noticed the curve of the Prince’s smile, or the way his eyes had brightened at the prospect of time out on the ocean. Too many years spent in isolation in the North. Best not to comment on Viktor’s happiness when it flickered to life; it was too elusive a thing now that he was grown.

 

\- - -

 

“Hello, cousin.”

“Otabek.” Seung-gil’s dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and he swung the door of his house open, three-headed hound a dark shadow drifting about his feet and then coming to sniff at Otabek’s tunic. “It’s been a long time.”

“I was a bit surprised to find you here.”

“Not as surprised as I am to see you traveling with the Princes instead of out in the ranges.” It wasn’t an answer, not really; and Seung-gil shrugged off the narrowing of Otabek’s eyes as he moved aside to let his cousin in. “I have an unusual obligation that brings me east from time to time.” He glanced down towards the hound. “It seemed logical for the time being to remain.”

Otabek blinked at him once, and then flashed a tiny, wry smirk. “As enigmatic as ever, I see.”

“Fine words, coming from you.”

_It is the nature of shadows to be ill-understood._

 

\- - -

 

_Three weeks to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

The ship’s name was the Ardor and Yuri _hated_ it.

For one thing it felt small. There was no place he could get where he wasn’t brushing elbows with the Easterlings or with his own tribe. Of the Eastern group, neither Kenjirou nor Yuuko behaved the way Yuri had come to expect of high elves: Kenjirou was far too curious, and hadn’t yet given up on figuring out what Yuri’s guardian was, and that fox of his got _everywhere_ somehow. If he didn’t know better, he might’ve suggested the young elf’s guardian was chaos incarnate. Yuuko was far too pre-occupied with the ship’s captain to be decent company: spending time with her meant spending time with the mage, who was big and loud and just generally tedious. Naturally the two of them got along spectacularly with Mila. Their happiness aggravated Georgi’s foul mood, which meant he tended to hog the cabin during the daytime, still in a sulk. At least the halfling, the steward who’d come to greet them, had the good sense to try to stay to himself. Of course this meant he kept showing up in all the places Yuri was trying to sneak off to in order to be left alone. Inevitably staying there was always a bad idea: Vitya would come around, sooner or later, and whether it was the fire mage with the weird Eastern bird he was looking for or his brother, Yuri could never actually say.

Viktor was in entirely too good of a mood, traveling out on the open ocean like this. With the coast off to their right, always in the distance, he had entirely too much water to draw on, more than enough magic to ward off any ailment. Yuri felt claustrophobic, trapped by the ship, even, and he’d be happier, he knew, when they made it to Shen-Osheth and stood back on dry ground. What he wanted was a quiet place, alone, to sit and summon the unicorn back. Someplace where the ship might finally feel still, someplace where he could _think._

Late at night, stirred by dreams that he couldn’t remember but which wouldn’t let him rest, Yuri wrapped himself up in a cloak and made his way topside, holding a small pool of light in his palm — an echo, a pale imitation of what he remembered from the spirit — wincing as he saw two other figures on deck; Seung-gil, the only Easterling who seemed to know how to mind his own business and Otabek, who turned to look back at him, gaze clear-eyed and steady. Yuri lifted a hand, greeting enough, he decided, and walked along the starboard side of the boat up towards the front. He settled there, back to the place where the wood of both sides came together in a neat point; fixed his eyes upwards and began to count constellations. He’d been a child once, and back then Vitya had told him stories; had smiled softly and pointed out the bear, the bow, the wheel.

Focused on the pinpricks of stars, their light so distant and so pure, he felt rather than saw as Otabek came to sit next to him. When Yuri turned to acknowledge him he saw that Otabek’s gaze was directed towards the flickers of light curling around his palm, delicate as stardust and perhaps as faint.

“You’re still having trouble with your familiar.” It was a statement, not a question.

Yuri sighed heavily, and clenched his fist, closing the light in until only small trickles of it could be seen through the seams of his fingers. “Yes.”

Otabek, though; Otebek reached over and gently unlocked Yuri’s clenched fist, until it lay flat in the cradle of his own palm. “Tell me what you remember,” he murmured calmly, and for a moment, Yuri nearly indulged him.

“I remember I’d been dreaming,” he said, flatly, tonelessly. “I woke up and there was a unicorn.”

To his surprise, Otabek chuckled. “Such reverence. No wonder it won’t come.” He lifted his opposite hand, and shadows curled around his fingertips; darker even, somehow, than the twilight in which they were sitting.

“Everyone says that.”

“Are you going to let me help you, or?”

Yuri sighed and looked down again at his hand; _their hands_ , the sort of thing that could be a revelation if he thought about it too much, and so naturally he refused to do so. Otabek seemed still as a statue, impossibly calm, and took Yuri’s silence for acceptance of a sort, lifting his free hand with its tendrils of shadow and waving it in front of Yuri’s face.

He was shrouded in an impossible darkness. “I can’t see.”

“Tell me again,” Otabek murmured, and in the cocoon of those shadows his voice seemed closer somehow. “What was it like?”

He closed his eyes uselessly, pointlessly, and talked about the beating of hooves and the steady twinkling of cold silver bells that had lingered in his dreams. He talked about the cool silver light of the moon and the distance of the stars. Of the walk that must have been more dream than it was reality, climbing up and over Mosciren’s highest peak, wandering through wisps of white fog with the whole world beneath him.

About the dark pools of the unicorn’s eyes, and their deep incandescence. The way its coat had a subtle, pooling glow; so white that to call anything else but the stars or the moon white was forever going to be a well-intended lie.

“… how could I be responsible for something that pure?” Yuri murmured, barely audible, and when Otabek didn’t answer he opened his eyes and the darkness was different: like the clouds got after a storm, when streaks of sunlight burst through, as tangible as light ever got. He blinked and blinked again and the shadows around him dissipated.

The unicorn stood in front of them now, and bent its long neck gracefully and with such care of the long point of its horn, to nudge at his bended knee. He didn’t notice the still cradle of Otabek’s hand, or the way the banshee had cradled his shoulders with another arm. Instead he reached up with great care and touched the sides of the horse’s head. _I’m sorry I sent you away._

“Yuri,” Otabek murmured, and there was some strange, foreign note to his voice, another one of those mysteries Yuri couldn’t unravel: “how could you not?”

He felt himself smile and stood up to wrap his arms around the horse’s neck, to sweep fingers through its starlight mane. “Beka,” he murmured, the diminutive easy somehow, inevitable as his gratitude: “this is my guardian.”

His mother was leagues away now and still she radiated approval when he let his thoughts drift that way. He understood a little better, now. About beauty. About righteousness.

“… So,” Yuri murmured, sliding a hand over the horse’s shoulders, along its back: “where’s yours?”

Otabek stood up slowly and laughed. “It might make your horse skittish.”

“My _unicorn,”_ Yuri corrected, with an unrepentant grin. He looked at the unicorn again, more and more tangible under his hand; _almost_ as real as Viktor’s stag: “Never.”

“ _You_ might get irritated.”

“Not now,” promised Yuri, which felt more like _not ever_ but was probably truer, given the tempers that ran so strongly in his family. _Passion,_ his mother had insisted once, defending her decision to stay away from Yakov for the third time, in spite of their soul bond or perhaps even because of it: _passion does not suffer slights._

Darkness swooped overhead and came crashing into the deck. Charcoal scales gleamed in the moonlight, only properly called that because the creature’s eyes were black and dark as the shadow Otabek had twisted him up in earlier. Giant wings — wider than the ship, it almost seemed, when they were extended, folded inwards and Otabek rose to go and greet the guardian he’d summoned, folding a hand over his chest in a curious gesture, honoring somehow, nearly like a bow. Then he put a hand up on the reptile’s snout, well over his head.

“… Otabek,” Yuri murmured, mouth slightly agape: “You have a _dragon?!”_

“I have a wyvern,” Otabek murmured, one corner of his mouth drawn upwards in a cool bemusement that Yuri _liked._ “Dragons are much, much worse.”

“Well,” he replied in a huff, smiling nonetheless: “he doesn’t scare the unicorn.”

“I can see that,” Otabek replied, “and I’m glad.”

_Me too._

 

\- - -

 

_Two weeks, two days to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

Viktor had warned them of the storm. More than once had Takeshi indicated that the owed the smoothness of their sail to the Northern Prince, whose water magic worked in their favor, but evidently _this_ was beyond Viktor’s power.

No, that wasn’t quite right: Takeshi had asked as they met for breakfast whether or not it was beyond his power, and Viktor had implied something different instead: that it was beyond his _choice._ Who was he to stop the arrival of a spring storm on the coast, where whole ecologies depended on the arrival of rain to grow and to thrive, for their simple convenience. “I’m not going to let anything happen to the ship,” Viktor had promised, and it was so easy to believe him, so simple. As though nobody would turn the high prince into a liar. “It’s just going to be an uncomfortable night.”

Uncomfortable had been something of an understatement; the ship rocked and shuddered in the waves, and not for the first time, Yuuri couldn’t sleep. Mari had gone right to bed, and even Kenjirou was asleep or pretending to be, but he’d struggled all week shut up in the cabin.

A ship was too much like a cage.

His familiar hated it.

 _Air. I need some air._ Nobody had needed a warning to stay below deck, where it was warm and dry even if the ship rocked and shuddered and hurled itself amidst the waves. Yuuri stayed there until he couldn’t stand it, and then he grabbed his cloak, wrapped himself up in it and climbed topside.

Takeshi was at the helm, and overhead Yuuri could see the grey bands of magic that held up the sails and informed them with a push of the mage’s wind magic, keeping their course steady.

The only other man on deck was Viktor, all the way up at the front of the ship, where the rise and plunge of the bow constantly splashed him with wave after crashing wave. The storm had destroyed any semblance of the order of his braids, had unfurled the length of his platinum hair like a wild banner, defiant in the wind, and he exuded magic, surrounded by a stormy, slate-blue sort of glow as he commanded ribbons of it to follow the leap of the white stag over the deck, sending water back out over the edges of the ship, or cutting the waves in half, like a tremendous, terrifying dance with something utterly and completely primeval.

The stories, then; the legends: they must have all been true. _He’s so strong …_

Until this precise moment, Yuuri decided, watching from underneath a hood that was already soaked through with rain, transfixed, even: he had never really understood the meaning of the word awe.

He stood there for hours until the waves began to lessen and the rain settled into a drizzle as they came ahead of the storm. Takeshi leaned over the ship’s great wheel, exhausted, and Viktor threw his head back and laughed, turning back to congratulate their captain. Instead, his blue gaze settled on Yuuri, who felt with sudden certainty that the prudent thing to do would be to run.

He was tired, though; exhausted as though he’d been the one expending all that effort, though none of it seemed to show on Viktor; frozen. _Cold._ Cold was the sensation he was feeling. He’d nearly forgotten it.

Viktor’s hands were on his face then and his triumphant smile faded: “you’re freezing, Yuuri,” he said, a sudden reprimand, and before Yuuri quite knew what was happening he was being hauled below deck and pushed into the captain’s quarters, where Viktor determinedly began stripping him out of his cloak. “How long were you out there?” He demanded, sternly, and Yuuri felt himself snapping back into the present as Viktor magically rang the water out of the garment and then released it back into the air.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, and Viktor felt his forehead again, brushed his damp bangs aside. Yuuri wasn’t sure what he’d done to earn such worry, and shook himself a little bit, particularly as Viktor’s hands reached next for his tunic. “Stop - stop — I can do this —“

Fire, though; fire felt _very_ far. It was harder than it should have been, to call pools of heat into his palms, and the phoenix didn’t come. _Smothered._ Smothered was the word he would have used. Smothered was what he was, suddenly, pulled into the circle of Viktor’s arms as more tendrils of the high elf’s magic swept over him, wringing the water from his clothes as he steadily began to warm up.

Distantly, Yuuri knew that it should have felt invasive, to be so washed over, so examined; it was strange that it did not. Slowly golden light flickered in his palms and ran up his forearms; the tension in Viktor’s shoulders eased somewhat, as he brushed a hand over Yuuri’s cheek: “Better,” the Prince murmured, distantly. “You’re meant to be warm.”

It should have felt invasive but it didn’t. Wrapped up in the fading tendrils of Viktor’s magic it was a difficult fact to examine. He’d turn it over in his mind for hours afterwards.

Viktor, suddenly exhausted, felt disinclined to lift his chin from Yuuri’s shoulder; Yuuri who was steadily turning into a bundle of warmth and heat and something like comfort. The captain’s bunk was close, and while Takeshi might’ve ruled the ship, Viktor was _going to be king someday_ and he felt no remorse whatsoever for pushing Yuuri into it, and climbing in afterwards:

“Viktor?” Everything with the halfling was a song of questions, an uncertainty he didn’t understand.

“We’re going to sleep,” said Viktor, far too at ease with telling someone else what to do, and already more than halfway there himself.

When Yuuri woke he was back in his own bunk, and though he could still feel the curious light of Viktor’s gaze following him whenever he moved about the ship, nothing was said about the night of the storm, or the way he’d fallen asleep with his head pillowed against Viktor’s chest, listening to the steady rhythm of a heartbeat that was nothing at all like his own.

 

\- - -

 

_Two weeks to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

The Ardor swept into the harbor of Shen-Osheth as though it hadn’t just come through the heart of a thunderstorm, no worse whatsoever for wear, and Yuuri was privately glad to leave it behind as he descended the gangway from the ship onto the southern capitol’s broad docks.

Green, red, and white banners with a yellow mayflower flapped overhead in the wind, and everywhere lanterns were lit with bright, yellow fire; fueled, Yuuri knew already, by magic of the Southrons. He’d come here before, traveling on his own wheel, and couldn’t help but smile ever-so-slightly at the memory. Hasetsuil, for all its fame, was rather small in comparison to Shen-Osheth, whose advantageous position in the bay of crescents made it a busy port for trade, the sort of place where someone could find anything they were looking for and plenty else besides.

Guang Hong Ji stood at the gates at the end of the docks with their welcoming party, with a three legged crow perched upon his shoulder. That was new; the last time he’d come through, traveling in an attempt to complete his own circle of the wheel, the city’s youngest noble hadn’t yet managed to call his familiar. He was smiling, and made it through the formalities of the words of welcome when:

“Yuuri!” He knew that voice from anywhere, recognized the bright spring of Phichit’s rabbit. The mage stepped forward from the rest of the Southrons, following the bounce of the spirit, and sprang forward to envelope Yuuri into an inescapable hug. They’d traveled together, back then, before Yuuri’d abandoned the road leading up to Samhain, too sick to carry on and unaware of what awaited him. “Gods, it’s good to see you.” How he’d earned the fierce warmth of Phichit’s friendship, Yuuri Katsuki wasn’t sure he’d ever know. “You’re hungry, I bet, I never eat well on those ships — oh my — is that —“

“I think Phichit has the right of it,” Guang Hong murmured with a careful smile, even as he looked up to study Viktor, to take the measure, somehow, of the family from the far away North who held the rights to lead them all, even as his own family ruled _here._ “I’ll take you all to the kitchens. We can manage introductions there.” The temptation to stay away from his friends proved too strong for the young noble, who drifted towards Yuuri and Phichit while they walked, instead of to the fair Northerners.

Guang Hong’s smile was all summertime sunlight. “We might even have your favorite,” he confided to Yuuri later, as though sharing a great secret: “Eastern traders landed here last week and they’ve got a spectacular chef.”

Phichit threw his head back and laughed and it was the sort of thing that warmed Yuuri’s heart to hear it. In two weeks they’d light the summer bonfires for Beltane; nothing at all like the tower of flame that he still remembered in his dreams, but kindred, close. The Southrons would drink too entirely too much mead, and they’d dance around in great circles, singing and laughing at everything and nothing all at the same time and for a night, perhaps, he’d get swept away into the brilliance and cheer with which they heralded in the summer.

For a night the phoenix would dance. There’d be no avoiding the lure of the flames.

Every year summer meant that winter would still come but the magic of Beltane was the audacity of the high season, the promise that maybe someday everything might live forever.


	5. only a starved dog’s logic about bones

 

_One week, six days to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

 

“Yuri tells me you helped him summon his familiar.”

That was Viktor’s voice, leaning against a wall outside the guest lodgings Guang Hong had arranged for revelers arriving for Beltane. Shen-Osheth was the largest of all the elven capitals, extending all the way from the harbor up the river delta where a maze of bridges spanned dozens of river offshoots, where in some of its lowlands the houses had been crafted on stilts to defend against springtime overflow, where elves of all kinds and mages alike serenely padded gondolas up the elegant canals. That Guang Hong’s people had enough space to reserve three entire guest houses in different parts of the city just in case of arriving revelers was a fact that had never been lost on Otabek. The Southrons had long surpassed the Northerners in openness and hospitality, and had fostered an environment meant for trade, for the exchange of ideas.

 _The pearl of the south,_ they called it, but it wasn’t so simple: Shen-Osheth was a labyrinth of many cities, ever moving, ever changing; not just one gem, but several.

He stepped out of his quarters to join Viktor on the long balcony that overlooked the canal below, granting the Prince a cool nod before leaning his arms against the reed-woven rail. “Your brother helped himself,” Otabek murmured calmly. It was, in a way, the truth; all he’d done was get Yuri out of his own way long enough for his magic to do the rest.

When he’d come north from the wilds, exhausted from constant battles, weary, he’d taken on a job in Yakov’s guard because it was the path of least resistance. An honor, supposedly, to be recognized in such a way, particularly considering his race. Yakov had not been alive for the first age but he was of the first generation of the second, and so he’d heard the stories. Perhaps that was why the North remained more closed off, more traditional, nestled into the protective embrace of the looming mountains. He’d developed a begrudging respect for Viktor. Begrudging because, if the stories were true, Viktor was part of the reason why the wilds had gotten so bad to begin with.

There was no denying his talent, however. No denying the power of his magic.

Viktor had not moved to join him, which suited Otabek just fine. “What are your intentions for my brother?”

Direct and to the point. Otabek wondered exactly how much of the story Yuri had told. Or perhaps Viktor had sussed something out of Yuri’s thoughts; families could do that, and whatever push and pull existed between the two brothers Otabek had no doubt of their protectiveness for each other. “I don’t have those kinds of expectations,” he said calmly, considering the irony of being asked such a thing by _Viktor,_ who’d taken two entire nations to war once over something that hadn’t even really been a soulbond, not truly. Otabek hadn’t been alive back then, but it had been the rangers who’d been left to deal with the consequences of the weaker west. He pursed his lips: “They breed resentment, don’t you think?”

“I’m not entirely sure what you’re implying.” There was, underneath his charm, a certain amount of danger in the Northern Prince; a readiness to remind the world of the nature of things, of the improbability of a victory when set against him. Otabek did not have to look back to imagine the flicker of challenge in his blue eyes, or the way his heart-shaped smile would have vanished, replaced by something cutting and serious.

 _You know precisely what I’m implying, Viktor._ This was not the front to engage him on, though; Otabek was beginning to suspect the past was, perhaps, more complicated than he’d once believed. “Are you asking me to keep my distance?” That would be, somehow, utterly unsurprising to hear from a Northern High Elf, who were the closest descendants to the clan his ancestors had fought against and then lost to in the first age.

And now they had the wilds, the blight. Primeval, misunderstood forces with no one to tend them.

“No.” It was the first surprise of the whole conversation, the first thing Otabek had not expected. He turned back to study Viktor, who was looking away, silver hair drawn up in a high ponytail, expression unreadable. “But you should know that if you hurt him, I’ll ruin you.”

“I knew that already.” If there was anything to know about Viktor, it was _that._

“Then why persist?”

Otabek considered this, and decided to offer Viktor just the one warning: “You won’t like my answer.”

“Try me.”

“Very well.” Strange, the way Lilia and Yakov had come together for this: the most talented sorcerer amongst all of the elves, and yet he understood none of the forces that really made a life worth living. “Has it honestly never occurred to you that he doesn’t have to share your fate?” Otabek didn’t say the rest, but he narrowed his eyes; thought it, and for a moment he believed that perhaps even Viktor might have thought it, too:

_that after a hundred years, neither do you?_

 

\- - -

 

_One week, five days to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

“You’re an early riser.” Viktor had learned to expect as much, though to a certain degree even he wasn’t sure why he’d bothered keeping tabs. He couldn’t have said the same about the habits of most of the other Easterlings, but then again, none of the other Easterlings had presented a sunrise riddle to him and then subsequently refused to explain themselves; none of them had stood on the deck of the ship enduring their opposing elements just to watch him separate waves.

“Viktor?” Finding the Northerner outside of his room was a surprise; Guang Hong had given all of the travel groups guest houses in carefully chosen districts of the city, and without his friendship with Phichit, Yuuri would’ve regularly lost his way to the house reserved for the party traveling from Hasetsuil, which was set up on stilts over one of the flood plains, where every street and walkway was vaulted over the delta, part of a crooked, sprawling maze. “I like sunrise,” Yuuri said, which was part-truth. The phoenix liked sunrises. The phoenix had swept into his life and remade him in the image of a morning person, forever unable to sleep with the prospect of a rising sun on the horizon.

“I thought as much.” He smiled, vague and a little distant, and looked down the twists of the crooked street. “You won’t be able to see it particularly well from here. Walk with me?”

Was anything with Viktor really an offer? This sounded like one, but given his station, it’d be rude to decline. Yuuri hesitated, and then a bit of curiosity struck, flickering like a lit candle in a subtle breeze: “You know your way around Shen-Osheth?” _Of course he does. He’s probably been here dozens of times …_

“Not really,” Viktor admitted with a soft chuckle, and then he glanced down through the reeds towards the stream meandering below. “I listen to the currents.”

“Oh.” Yuuri wasn’t sure how that would help; he could track the movement of the sun overhead and still not wind up in quite the right place, amidst Shen-Osheth’s woven maze.

“It’s enough to get to the harbor,” Viktor explained, flashing the polite curve of a smile once more. Then he gestured to his left, to underscore the point. “It’s this way. Are you coming?”

“… Sure,” Yuuri murmured, still uncertain, because there was nothing the Prince of the North could possibly have wanted with his company. He turned, and found himself face to face with Viktor, who’d put both hands on his shoulders, and was applying that same strange scrutiny, like Yuuri was something he was still trying to piece together:

“Let your yes be your yes,” he said, quietly but firmly, the sort of thing that could’ve sounded like a reprimand but somehow, Yuuri knew, wasn’t; underscored the offer in the first place, the importance of his own choice.

“Yes,” he said then, though he was eager to get out from under Viktor’s hands, to look away from that piercing, hauntingly blue gaze. “I’m coming.” They walked together in silence for some time, marked only by Viktor’s brief pauses as streams ran together: something that would’ve been almost unnoticeable, if he hadn’t already mentioned the way he read the river currents; slowly the walkways became broader, and shuttered shops became more recognizable, and Yuuri knew they were getting close.

Surrounded by the muted purple light of pre-dawn, Viktor finally spoke: “Why did you come out for the storm on the Ardor?”

So this was it, then. The conversation Yuuri had thought might’ve come just after the storm, except he’d woken up alone, and then Viktor had said nothing for days. “I don’t like small spaces.”

Yuuri had a bird familiar; Viktor supposed that made sense. It also felt like only part of the truth, which was what every conversation with Yuuri Katsuki was like, watching the halfling withhold wholesale parts of himself. _It irritates you because you do it_ was Viktor’s thought, wrapped in Yuri’s voice. He’d been thinking about Yuri a lot since arriving at Shen-Osheth; even though there was Beltane to get through and then months before the trip out West it was still a reminder that the next stage of the wheel was imminent.

Viktor had not gone west except to extract vengeance in exchange for peace.

A hundred years ago.

Back then he’d called it _justice._

“You stayed,” he murmured carefully, dissatisfied: “For hours. When I caught you …”

“I lost track of time,” Yuuri murmured, defensive. Fire had always come so easily to him, and he’d never really sought out storms. The idea of being drenched by one in both the physical and metaphysical sense had never occurred to him. That there was some danger, perhaps, in too much exposure. And yet here was Viktor, the best water mage of the age, asking him questions.

Was that dangerous? Perhaps.

“I was watching you,” he said suddenly, because that was the truth in its most essential form. “It was mesmerizing.” _You were mesmerizing._ There: that was the real danger. This perilous interest in a thing he could never have. The way it had been so easy to let Viktor sweep magic over him and then fall asleep listening to his steady heartbeat.

That was the real threat.

“Ah.” They were coming up on the docks now, walking out onto one of the piers where the bay would stretch out before them, serene. The sun would rise off to the left, and Yuuri instinctively turned that way to watch as the phoenix materialized on his shoulder, a subtle, translucent scarlet. “Curious.”

“What do you mean, curious?”

“I felt the same way, once, watching a sunrise a few miles out from Hasetsuil.” How long had it been since he’d felt anything like that? For that matter, had he ever? “Are you still going to deny it?”

“… No,” Yuuri breathed, and the rising sun was reflected in the dark pools of his eyes, made them molten. “But I wish you’d quit asking about it.”

“Why do you insist on hiding so much of yourself?”

“Curious,” echoed Yuuri, aware that perhaps it wasn’t the wisest thing in the world to do, to mimic the high prince. “Why do you?”

One corner of Viktor’s mouth tugged upwards in a wry smirk. Two challenges in two days. There was a fight in the halfling, a flickering, unpredictable fight; but a fight nonetheless. In places where it would have been more prudent to cede their ground both Yuuri and Otabek had held firm.

Courage, by its very definition, was always a surprise. “I have my reasons.”

Yuuri smiled, but Viktor thought it looked a little bit sad, even with his face awash in rising gold. “So do I.”

 

\- - -

 

_One week, four days to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

Travelers from the West arrived for Beltane; tired and hungry and haggard. They’d come in from the desert roads and had haunting stories to tell about the creatures that stalked the wilds. Guang Hong knew one of them, apparently; a human mage named Leo, who’d looked at Viktor with an abrupt, sudden terror, all careful dread.

Guang Hong had swept him away before there could be answers.

Seung-gil, who usually had less than nothing to say, turned to look at Otabek, his expression flat and unreadable: “Evidently the roads are getting worse.”

“So it would seem.”

 

\- - -

 

_One week to Beltane, 1017 II Age_

The Northerners went together to the night market. Shen-Osheth was famous for them: vendors and artisans of all types had decided to make their home in the pearl of the south, and the stalls stayed lit long after dark with hanging lanterns that glowed in dozens of different shades, lit by the subtle pulsing of magical light.

Yuri spent more than he should have with a man who sold stylish, well-made tunics. Georgi accompanied Mila through a store selling amulets, looking melancholy at first and then increasingly thoughtful. Viktor was engrossed by a glassblower, pocketing a freshly molded bird with a long, sweeping tail. Otabek spent little and said less, though he came along for the entire night with a tolerant, subtle smile, and when Mila bought them all tiny torches that lit up in different colors and then challenged everyone in a race back to the guesthouse he obliged, laughing in his own quiet, reserved fashion as he and Yuri struggled to keep up with Viktor, who’d sent the stag forward first, and followed without hesitation every lucky turn it took, every haphazard shortcut which just happened to work out in his favor.

“Cheater,” grumbled Yuri, as he pulled up in third place, just behind Otabek, and he stalked up to his brother to wave a shower of silver sparks in Viktor’s face. “You and your lucky breaks, Vitya —“

“It’s only natural,” Viktor murmured, smiling his heart-shaped smile, eyes crinkled by mischief at their edges. He was carrying a blue flare, and it reflected in the bright of his gaze as the stag stalked off down the hallway, getting fainter with every step until the bright white of its form had vanished. “Can’t help it.” Then he plunked the magical sparkler down in an empty vase, an invitation for others to do the same, and turned to head for his own quarters.  _Goodnight, Yura._

Lately he’d been an early riser. He lifted a hand to say goodnight, and Yuri didn’t need to see his face to feel the edges of his smirk rippling through the family bond. Mila and Georgi came in minutes later, each of them confessing to different wrong turns on the way back at least once. Which was to say: Georgi admitted to a wrong turn, though it seemed the run had raised his spirits a little bit; he offered a small smile as he said it. Mila insisted she’d gone on the scenic route. They’d each added their own sparklers to the bouquet Viktor began in the vase: Viktor’s blue, Yuri’s silver; Mila’s red and Georgi’s purple.

Otabek’s gold.

Unwilling to sleep just yet, Yuri climbed from the balcony up to the roof of the guest house, folded his hands behind his head and looked up at the stars. Otabek followed a few minutes after, as slow and silent as a creeping shadow, and when he came to sit cross-legged next to Yuri there was a package tucked under his arm. “I have something for you,” he murmured. “It’s from your mother.”

“Really?”

“Mm.” Otabek handed it over, something soft, wrapped in olive silk and tied up by a sprig of vine, a sure sign of Lilia’s work, and Yuri smiled a little bit at this reminder of home, half a world away, before he undid the wrappings. Inside was a hooded cloak, so deep a midnight blue that it was nearly black: like the night sky, overhead. As he unfolded it the embroidery on the back became clear: the sigil of a unicorn, sewn in strands of a silver so pale it was almost white with deep, purple eyes.

“… Viktor has one of these,” Yuri murmured, holding it up to examine in the moonlight before sweeping it over his shoulders. Viktor’s was silver, and the stag was white, and its eyes were the same cerulean blue as his. “She made it for him when he got his stag; they’re nearly indestructible … I used to steal it from him all the time, when I was younger.”

 _I wanted to be him, back then._ Viktor had loomed so large in his childhood; his brother, the living legend.

“Now you have your own.”

“Thanks to you,” Yuri murmured, drawing his knees up to his chest, and resting his chin on them.

“What I did was next to nothing,” Otabek replied quietly, glancing up to study the crescent moon. “You’re not meant to be like him, you know.”

“I do know that.”

“Do you?” Otabek asked, and he turned to fix Yuri with the piercing dark of his gaze. “Before I came to Mosciren the other rangers spoke of two brothers. _Be wary of the elder. He has soft eyes and a hardened heart.”_ Yuri’s brow furrowed and he rose to Viktor’s defense, ready to object, to insist that something horrible had happened once, a long time ago; that nobody, even the banshees, had any right to judge, but Otabek shook his head slightly, pressed a finger to the blonde’s lips, and continued:

“So I asked: what of the younger? And they said: _he has hard eyes, and nobody knows his heart._ But I know now. I’ve seen what guards you. The younger of the two brothers has hard eyes and a gentle heart.”

“Tch.” Yuri tried to snort, but a subtle blush dusted his high cheekbones, and there was a soft smile threatening to break out under the scowl he’d tried to frame. “… It doesn’t feel very gentle.”

“I imagine not.” Otabek turned to look back up at the moon. “Sometimes I think that we banshees are the only people who’ve ever learned that purity does not necessarily equate to kindness. What I want to say to you is this: what you have, Yuri, could never possibly be a thing like weakness.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaa beltane is the next chapter and i am *so damn excited* to write it that it'll probably be up tomorrow or the day after because it's already outlined and aaaaaaa bonfires aaaaaaaa. 
> 
> and then doom. after that is at least one chapter of doom. doom and explanations. you've been warned.


	6. a torch song, touch me and you’ll burn

 

_The Festival of Beltane, 1017 II Age_

 

Beltane began at dusk. A Southron mage named Sara had been chosen to lead the processional of revelers through the city, dressed in a white dress with a cape billowing out from both her shoulders, embroidered with creeping crimson flowers and golden starbursts. Yellow flowers and creeping vines were woven together into a high headdress atop her head. She bore a lit torch in each hand, followed closely by Guang Hong and her twin brother, a magus named Michele. Otabek had met him briefly; long enough to decide no one ever need tell the Northern princes that they were being outdone in protectiveness by a mere human. The parade led the way through the nine sacred gates of the city, each of them lit overhead by a stream of fire, and then up a hill overlooking Shen-Osheth’s prized position along the bay. At the front were the Southrons, followed by the small party from the West.

It was not lost on Otabek that the Westerners marched with an uncharacteristic stoicness, though some kept looking back as the processional wove through the city, glancing surreptitiously at Viktor, who led the Northern court, carrying a torch of his own. He and Yuri were resplendent in their cloaks and there was no mistaking the thin silver circlets they both wore for the occasion, marks of the rank Yakov and Lilia had been careful to never let their sons forget.

The Easterlings were last. As the throng began to climb the hill, Leo chanced a glance backwards — not just to keep an eye on the Northern princes uncomfortably at his back — Yuri’s presence was understandable, but _why_ had Viktor taken it upon himself to accompany his brother on the wheel? He could not look at them for long, and shifted his attention to the rest of the crowd, interspersed with torches of the procession leaders of each kingdom and the subtle glow of dozens of different familiars jumping and flying forward. Interspersed on the climb were drummers who beat the same driving rhythms in a perfect unison. It lifted his spirits enough to release his own lion, which emerged in a wave of golden light next to him to join the upwards prowl.

At the top of the hill was an ancient circle of stones and three large fire pits piled high with dried wood, yellow broom and sweet-smelling herbs. Sara, Guang Hong, and Michele separated, standing near each of the stacks, and they waited there as the processional made it up the hill and revelers spread around each of the piles of flame in a sweeping circle. The percussionists, each of them carrying their own drum in a sling harness, followed, climbing up on the stone ledges. The pace of the drumbeat quickened, and the three Southrons who’d led the processional each bent to light one of the three great bonfires: Sara and Michele each dropped their torches to the base, and Guang Hong’s crow flew overhead as a ball of flame emerged in his hand and then leapt to light the third bonfire.

Fire and smoke billowed upwards and suddenly the rest of the Easterling court leapt over the far end of the short stone walls; some of them bearing horns, lyres, and lutes to add to the music. The others waved long streamers of green, gold, and red, and as the sweet smell of smoke rose overhead they spread around the circle, grabbing revelers from the four kingdoms to begin the summer dance.

After that, everything was the best kind of chaos. Mead ran freely from a pile of large wooden barrels stacked outside of the circle, and there were large casks of wine, some of the city’s best chefs lined up to provide the evening’s food, a feast nearly as large as dinner had been. Dancers twisted their way around each of the three fires, moving from east to west. One of the Southrons had come to fetch Yuri, sending him into the circles with the rest of the others who were working to complete the wheel.

Viktor could not be left to watch a dance for terribly long before he failed to join it, and soon the two princes wove through opposite ends of the weaving revelers. Lilia’s hand in their training was all-too apparent: Viktor and the stag glided through the dance flawlessly, never to stumble on a strange patch of grass or to bump into another dancer. It was, no doubt, captivating; very few of the elves had not managed to ignore the presence of royalty at this year’s festival.

Otabek redirected his attention to the gentle canter of the white unicorn staying to the outside of the throng of dancers, and found himself smiling subtle as it came around the nearest corner. It was Yuri’s hand reaching out under the arc of the horse’s neck that was the real surprise; quick fingers clenched around his wrist to pull him into the dance.

“Where’s your wyvern?”

“No sense intimidating anyone,” Otabek murmured, raising a brow at Yuri’s answering frown.

“Tell me you dance at least.”

“Not in any way that would please the Queen of the elves,” Otabek murmured with wry bemusement, thinking of the rigidity with which Lilia adhered to the old traditions, the ancient dances.

Yuri was in no way deterred. “Show me.”

The Prince got an answering grin in return as Otabek twisted their fingers into a knot. “Try and keep up.”

They passed the Easterlings; the halfling was gone, and Seung-gil’s black eyes met his, impassive. For the first time Otabek wondered whether or not he was really fixing a rift, or if this: Yuri’s hand in his, their interplay of light and dark, was a betrayal of the ancients.

He did not have the answer. Yuri spun in front of him, wisps of light creeping up his arms.

The ancients were dead and gone, the war of the first age long lost. All they had was the gift of the present.

 

\- - -

 

Drinking had been Phichit’s idea. Dancing had been Phichit’s idea first, but with the dry heat of the flames and the heady, sweet-smelling smoke, refreshments were evidently necessary. Two cups of mead later, even Yuuri could admit he felt more carefree. Overhead the phoenix flew in joyful, sweeping loops. “One more,” said Phichit cheerfully, thrusting another cup into Yuuri’s hand, and clinking their mugs together with a sloppy clink.

“Phichit, I would like to be able to _remember_ tomorrow …”

“That makes one of us,” quipped the Southron, grinning unrepentantly. “Look how happy your bird is, Yuuri, and relax a little bit.” That was true, had _always_ been true. Yuuri still remembered his first trip to Shen-Osheth, when he’d first met his southern friends, and though Beltane was a festival that was never precisely the same way twice there was no forgetting the heady rush of the music and smoke, or the mesmerizing rise and fall of the flames. “Now drink up.”

After that, Yuuri made excuses about making an offering and promising to catch up later as Phichit made his way back towards the dance. His fingers _tingled,_ giving off telltale sparks of gold and scarlet. Passing back through the revel, he caught sight of a familiar streak of silver hair. At each of the four cardinal directions, big cradles of fire had been lit, and piles of dried yellow flowers lay on the ground to be added as fuel to the flames. These were the fires meant to promise the constant rise of the sun, and in their heat, all harmful influence, all evil, all regret … these things, darknesses little and great, could all be burnt away.

Viktor picked up a stalk of the dried, yellow flowers, and held them up to his nose to inhale their honey scent. Then, with an expression Yuuri thought read a little bit like regret, he tossed them into the climbing, hungry flames, blue eyes fixed on the rising column of sweet smoke. He’d seen Viktor dancing earlier, too; about a full quarter turn ahead in the revel. In Viktor’s steps, Yuuri had been able to read an art that was older that Minako’s, Lilia’s work, no doubt.

It had been flawless and perfect and mesmerizing.

And yet he moved _between_ the revelers, amongst them but not really _with_ them. On the ship the storm’s lightning and thunder had burst cracks in his mien, had let the light shine through.

Undeterred in his original purpose, Yuuri crept around the circle to the Eastern cauldron, picking up a bundle of the dried flowers. The phoenix landed on his shoulder, and Yuuri tossed the flowers into the burning flames.

“What did you wish for?” Seung-gil, leaning against a nearby wall. Yuuri had only ever seen Seung-gil dancing once, and it had been back when he’d needed to complete the wheel, when Phichit had come forward and dragged the banshee and his hellhound out to the circle whilst simultaneously ignoring any signs of resistance or protest.

Yuuri sighed heavily and looked overhead. The heady, sweet smoke had spread so far and so thick that he couldn’t see the stars.

“I think you know.”

 

\- - -

 

_I don’t have those kinds of expectations … they breed resentment, don’t you think?_

Why the banshee’s words were coming back to haunt him precisely now, Viktor couldn’t be entirely sure. He’d chosen to ignore the increasing closeness between the banshee Captain and his brother; had carefully blocked all thoughts of the ribbons of shadow and light magic that followed them around the revel away from Yakov or Lilia, distant echoes across the connections that knit their family together.

Truthfully he’d been looking for the halfling fire-mage. A few days before Beltane it had occurred to Viktor that _perhaps_ here, amongst all of the lit fires, the torches, the fireworks; Yuuri might let himself go, might reveal more than just the secret Viktor had stumbled upon that early morning all those moons ago. So far, though, the Easterling had alluded him, which was discomfiting: usually nothing evaded Viktor, once he bent his thoughts towards it.

Except he hadn’t really been considering Yuuri, standing in front of the offering cauldron; not fully. He’d been thinking about the past; the subtle accusations of half-heartedness that followed him. Even the halfling had pointed out the parts of himself held apart.

 _I’m protecting myself,_ he thought, glancing warily towards the stag, and then moving to climb one of the stone walls for a slightly elevated view of the throng of revelers. No one had given chase tonight. By now the war was an old story and his legend went in front of him. _Perhaps nobody would give chase again._

Hadn’t that been exactly what he wanted?

Invincibility. Viktor had climbed to a place so high that nobody could reach him, and in doing so he’d forgotten that it meant nobody could _touch_ him, either. Off in a distant darkness a flicker of red and gold caught his eye and Viktor smiled to himself. Of course. Yuuri, too, had flown away from the crowd.

He jumped down and strode away, leaving the revel behind him completely.

 

\- - -

 

A ribbon of fire leapt outwards from Yuuri’s hand as he leapt over the grass, keeping time with the song he could still hear in the distance as his arms rose overhead, only distantly recalling the words Minako had put to any of her instructions; words like _pirouette_ or _arabesque_. The phoenix raced after the orange streamer of fire, darting between each magical ray in a rapid, tight spiral that flew and floated around Yuuri like multiple moons in orbit.

Even as Yuuri himself flew, springing into a backwards arc that carried him through an aerial, surrounded by a subtle, ever-flickering glow not unlike the tongues of flame which had burnt their way up the bonfire: sometimes scarlet, sometimes bronze.

Viktor could not stop staring.

A very small part of his brain was analyzing the steps, cataloguing every twist and turn and flip of the halfling’s body as he moved through the dance, surrounded by the burst and sweep of his familiar. There were echoes here that he recognized. Minako’s work, no doubt, but Viktor knew the original: a lover’s dance Lilia had taught him an age ago, before everything had gotten twisted and bent.

This was derivative, but not in a bad way. As though the first dance had been put into a forge for refining, and emerged startling and different, but also strangely purified and stronger. The stag leapt into the fray before he did, an unconsciously made decision that was probably unwise. Yuuri had once spent far too much time braving a rainstorm that had nearly flooded and overwhelmed his magic, and here Viktor was,contemplating what it would be like to step into that heat, and let himself be awash with its light.

What he’d seen outside of Hasetsuil from a distance had only been a hint. Seen from a distance, it had been impressive but vague, like staring into a cloudy mirror, or looking into a wayseeing stone just before the connective vision of them began to clear.

This was.

This was.

It was something Viktor did not have words for, and he strode purposefully forward, ignoring the pain of regret that sprang up when Yuuri finally realized he was there, and sprang to a sudden halt, flustered and red-faced and no-doubt scrambling to build up another one of his subtle smoke-screens. “Dance with me,” Viktor said, quite suddenly and perfectly aware that he’d never wanted anything quite as badly as he wanted _this._

Something in Yuuri did battle in the darks of his eyes and Viktor watched it, fascinated. “… You’re supposed to _ask_ ,” the halfling murmured, tilting his chin up as the phoenix darted overhead. The white stag reared up and gave chase and Viktor found himself smiling; not the polite smile or even the charming one.

Viktor held a hand out, repeated himself, would have begged if necessary: “Please,” said the high Prince of the elves, who was going to repent of all of the ways in which he’d assumed he already understood beauty:

“Please, will you dance with me?”

Those two sides of the halfling fought again and one of them lost swiftly. Yuuri’s hand was warm and dry in his own. “Yes.”

 _This_ , Yuuri realized afterwards, though he had no idea if it was seconds or minutes or hours; _this is different._ Around every golden sweep of magic there drifted a silver one; for every burst of crimson, pure azure blue. In the crowd Viktor had been beyond everyone else, unreachable. Effortlessly so. Viktor was _with_ him here, devastatingly _present_. Viktor whose eyes had narrowed subtly at the challenge it presented to braid their magic together; to keep the balance just-so, lest the water smother the flame or the heat evaporate each stream. The gold and pale silver twined more tightly, as close as the brush of their racing guardians, and then there was their bodies: together and apart, so perfectly in sync that Yuuri forgot who it was who’d started the dance and abandoned any idea whatsoever of finishing it.

For one perfect, stretching moment, there was no leader, no follower.

Viktor caught Yuuri by the waist, drew him close, ran a thumb over the soft curve of the halfling’s mouth. Platinum strands of hair had fallen out of his ponytail, stuck to his face, and yet his touch felt cool and soft. Yuuri felt feverish by compare. Dizzy and heady, because there was no escaping the brilliant blue of Viktor’s gaze and what came next was as inevitable as the tides. “I would like to kiss you, Yuuri Katsuki.”

He replied without thinking, all instinct, heat, and nerve. This was someplace beyond thought. “I would like to let you.”

Viktor’s kiss was an invitation, an intoxication, a siren-song. _Come and drown,_ it whispered.

Yuuri’s kiss tasted like spices and cinnamon, and it blossomed like sunrise: first with soft hesitancy, and then ascendant, ablaze. _Come and burn,_ it sang.

Silver and gold snapped and sparkled around them both, twining around the lock of their fingers, the press of their bodies. For a moment Viktor thought he almost heard a heartbeat, racing faster than his own, and then suddenly as the Beltane fireworks went off in the distance Yuuri pushed back.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered then, and Viktor opened his eyes for a second shock: knots of his own magic, silver and white and a very pale blue, still twisting around Yuuri’s hands.

_Did I lose myself that much?_

“I can’t,” Yuuri stammered, urgently, as though there was something he was willing Viktor to understand but would not explain. “I have to go.”

He fled and Viktor did not stop him, Viktor who was staring down at his hands, and the slowly evaporating flickers of gold, tell-tale signs of what had nearly just occurred. One dance, one kiss, and he’d nearly started the strange magic that eventually knit two people together, drunk on the sparks between them, the neat synchronicity of their dance: the very first steps of a soulbond.

Yuuri, too. That had been _Yuuri’s_ heartbeat, for a moment, drumming in _Viktor’s_ ears faster than anything he’d ever heard before.

Yuuri, who was fire and heat and who’d made Viktor feel alive again, leaving with nothing more than a shattering _I can’t._

 

\- - -

 

Across the family soulbond Yuri felt a strange surge of brilliance from Viktor, and stepped out of the dance, dragged Otabek with him, looked around for Viktor. No sign of him was to be seen.

_Vitya?_

No answer, either, just a strange, persistent incandescence. Yuri slumped against Otabek’s shoulder, suddenly tired; they’d danced for a very long time, and then they’d gotten drinks, and then they’d danced again. At one point Yuri’d said something, he couldn’t even remember what, and Otabek had thrown his head back and laughed, and something strange and bubbly had seized Yuri’s chest, made him crave more of whatever it was that showed him what Beka really was. “Have you seen my brother?”

Otabek, to his credit, looked up and around, silent for several moments before answering with a slight shake of his head, readying himself to go and look for the evidently-missing Prince.

“No, leave him.” Whatever it was that had briefly made Viktor so happy was something Yuri did not want to interrupt. It was fading now; but not in a bad way: the full weight of Viktor’s thoughts had gone elsewhere, far away from the family’s link. “… Want to make an offering?”

“You’ll forgive me,” Otabek teased with a straight face that Yuri certainly would’ve misread weeks before, lifting a palm full of shadows, “for not wanting to wish away the darkness.”

“… Well,” Yuri admitted, thinking about it for the first time, “maybe not so much. Your kind of darkness can stay. _I’m_ going to make one.” Wine had made him talkative; a faint blush colored his high cheekbones and he smiled more easily. “I’ve got good things to wish for.”

“Such as?”

“Secret things,” said Yuri, rewarded with a chuckle, and it was easier than it should have been to drag Otabek with him once more, to burn flowers in the cauldron of the North. They drank some more, and danced, and when the fireworks burst overhead, a tiny sliver of Yuri realized he couldn’t feel Viktor at all. He’d been thinking about the protective drape of Otabek’s arm, and the way the unicorn had stayed with them for much of the night before shying away from the crowds.

At the end of Beltane, revelers lit candles in the dying streaks of the bonfires, and walked them back down to Shen-Osheth, a hundred different lights carried down the hill in the deep purple light that marked the hour just before dawn.

Yuri and Otabek came back together, Otabek making a game out of the shapes of the flickering shadows each tiny flame cast while they walked, and having finally released the wyvern to fly overhead, nothing more than the feeling of a cold wind and a large pair of black wings that blocked out the stars.

In the Northern guest house, Viktor stood alone on the balcony, with no candle of his own, staring long and hard at the cradle of his two hands, running a thumb back and forth over the deepest line in his palm.

“Viktor?”

Yuri received no answer. Otabek extinguished his candle and pulled the wyvern into nothingness once more, and then let himself inside. He knew when to make himself scarce.

_Vitya?_

_… Yura?_

Viktor looked up at him then, and even in the low light of pre-dawn a revelation Yuri wasn’t prepared for hit him, sharp and strong as a kick to the stomach. Had his brother, untouchable, charmed Viktor, been _crying?_

Whatever it was, Viktor’s eyes were maudlin storms and turbulent seas, and they gave him away. A dozen different questions lodged in Yuri’s throat as he tentatively felt across the bond, and flinched at the ache he was presented with.

What had changed in a handful of hours? How had he not _noticed?_

Not once in his life had Yuri ever been in the situation of needing to offer comfort to his brother. It was impossible to even imagine. He stepped forward carefully, and stood up on tiptoe to tuck errant strands of Viktor’s hair back behind his ears; thought of his childhood, when his picture of his brother had been simpler and purer; when he’d first been learning how to use magic, how to fight, and he’d made a thousand different mistakes. Sometimes Viktor had been hard and stern, like Yakov, trying to make him _better,_ but sometimes; every so often, he’d been gentle and kind too, opened up his arms, gave hugs and picked Yuri up to swing him through the air as consolation.

One of those things he certainly could not do, but the other: Yuri enveloped his brother in a fierce hug. Questions could wait.

Viktor all but folded into him, an impossibility in and of itself. Viktor, who was certainly crying again now if he hadn’t been before.

Viktor, the lucky one.

…

Something had _beaten_ him. Something had _broken_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's going to get worse before it gets better?
> 
>  
> 
> um, sorry, etc -ducks-


	7. the air moves back from you like a wave

 

_The day after Beltane, 1017 II Age_

 

By the late afternoon, after they’d all slept away the morning, Viktor looked as calm and collected as he’d ever been. A man in the habit of building walls had no trouble reconstructing them. Yuri wasn’t sure which troubled him more: the strange dichotomy of the night before, still unexplained, or the way his brother had so swiftly put himself back together. He hardly had the time to consider either option; a messenger rang at the guest house; _Phichit,_ he recalled absently. “Vitya, it’s for you.”

Viktor had put away his circlet and his cloak, but they might as well have remained; he walked out into the entryway in the manner he sometimes stood in Mosciren next to their father, tall and impassive. Unreadable. He smiled politely, _thinly,_ Yuri thought. “What can I do for you?”

Phichit looked up, startled out of his thoughts. Viktor raised an eyebrow. Had the messenger been worried? What about? “Ah — Guang Hong requests your presence; he’s at the summer hall. If you’re willing to come now, I can show you the way.”

“Is everything alright?”

“… Aah, I think so.” Phichit ran a hand through the inky black of his hair and then smiled quickly and brightly. “Apologies. I’ve been thinking about a friend of mine.” At the guest house for the Easterlings, Yuuko had turned him away; Yuuri, evidently, had still not gotten out of bed. “Guang Hong didn’t tell me what this was about, so.”

“I see.” Viktor murmured. “Am I to come alone?”

“That is his preference.”

Before Yuri could protest; after all, he was a _Prince_ , too, Viktor shrugged and gave an absent nod.

“Very well. Let’s be off.”

 

\- - -

 

Had he been in a better mood, Viktor might’ve taken the time to slow down and admire the ornate carvings of Shen-Osheth’s summer hall, the place where its rulers congregated to hold council and oversee; the way great sweeping boughs met overhead; the tapestries on the walls or the painted designs on the bottom of the reed-thatched roof. Paper lanterns hung from each overhead archway, gently glowing in a dozen different colors. It was nothing like the stone splendor of Mosciren or the intricacy of Ast Petyriel; the crafts had diverged centuries ago. Still, he’d once walked through this place when he was young, traveling the wheel with friends of his own before everything had gone wrong. Back then he’d admired it. Back then Shen-Osheth’s open city walls had challenged him: there’d been a handful of humans in Hasetsuil, but here they were everywhere.

He was older now. Had thought he’d known better. Had even believed that he’d learned. “You wanted to see me?” There was a certain irony in being summoned by Guang Hong, who, like every other of the noble elves, ultimately owed his allegiance to the north. Nonetheless this was his family’s hall, and in it, Viktor could summon at least the appearance of cordiality.

Guang Hong was seated next to one of the Westerners; there had been no introductions when their group arrived, weary from travel, and Viktor had not inquired. “Leo,” he murmured, with an uncharacteristic, subtle frown: “Please tell Prince Viktor what you’ve shared with me about your journey here.”

Leo looked uncertain, staring at Viktor for a long time with a careful dread that he couldn’t entirely hide, until Guang Hong laid a hand on his shoulder. Slowly the brunette’s eyes slid sideways, and then he sighed and began to relay the tale, looking down at his hands, worrying at his nails.

“The sunset road is more treacherous than it’s ever been,” Leo began quietly, uncertain. “Don’t get me wrong, we’re _accustomed_ to it,” he muttered, summoning the courage to look up at Viktor with briefly narrowed eyes. “Jean-Jacques has been doing what he can, and the rangers patrol, sometimes; they ride west from the canyon south, but there’s only so many of them … Some years it’s a little better, but on the whole, all of the elders, they say it’s just gotten steadily worse.”

Viktor had only ridden the Sunset Road once, and it had been a wild, untamable place, coming across the desert, not entirely _safe_ but not worthy of this description, either. He walked up to a nearby chair and sat, drawing a hand up to his chin. “Go on.” It was not really a request.

“We were two days out of Vaux Romandith, just coming up on the valley of the poles when we saw our first wraith. That’s the nearest any caravan’s recorded them to the city itself, so alarming that we sent one of our own back to alert the council. The rest of us carried on. The valley runs perfectly north-south, so —“

“I’ve been.”

“Right.” Leo swallowed. “So it’s covered in shadows. Normally pilgrims camp halfway to save their strength for the desert ride. We met revenants three times and had to scare them off. It’s another three day journey across the desert. By then we split up into watches, tried to keep moving — a couple of us have air magic, levitated people while they slept …”

“You encountered revenants even in broad daylight?”

“Yes. Revenants and worse. One or two other wraiths, I think. Spectres. My friend Emil swears he had a dream about one so great that it took the form of a giant —“

“Dragon.”

“You know about _them?_ ”

“I’ve only heard rumors.” Viktor looked over at Guang Hong, then, and the young elf’s face was set into a determined, disapproving frown. “The captain of my father’s guard was a ranger.”

“You will be lucky to travel with one,” Leo said, quietly.

“I get that a lot.”

Guang Hong had evidently had enough of listening. “Are you going to sit there and deny that this is, in some part, _your_ fault?”

“Pardon?” Viktor turned to face the southern elf’s ire; inspired, he supposed, by protectiveness of his friend.

“Leo could have been _killed_.” Strange; in all the stories he’d heard of Shen Osheth’s youngest noble the word _fury_ had never been included. There it was, though; the hard edges of it in Guang Hong’s gaze. “Are you going to sit there and pretend that your decision to force their leader to _abdicate_ hasn’t left the wilds without a strong hand to keep the revenants at bay?”

 _Christophe._ Christophe’s memory was a ghost that had haunted their entire journey; in part because the last time he’d completed it, Christophe had also been on the pilgrimage, and they’d come of age together at the same time. “… I do not deny it.”

“You destabilized an entire _country_ ,” Guang Hong said, “and it’s hurting people I care about.” _I won’t forgive you._

“I can see that.”

“Can you?” Guang Hong’s temper flared again, bright and hot and for a moment Viktor’s mind wandered completely, considering smoke and flame and … “Then tell me, Prince Viktor: what do you think is going to happen when _two_ of the direct descendants of the ancient kings go across that road with a whole caravan of revelers.” His eyes narrowed. “The revenants may just be echoes of what they were in the first age but they’ll have a sense for _you._ They’ll come hungry. They’ll be out for blood.” He sighed heavily. “I intend to give this information to the Easterlings and the rest of my court. They’ll want to take council to decide whether or not it’s even worthwhile to try to proceed. But my people will travel. We have to see our friends back to their homes. What are _you_ going to do?”

“The answer is perfectly obvious,” Viktor murmured, more calmly than he felt. He had decades of practice pretending. No reason to stop now. “The Northerners will leave early and clear the way.”

“That’s … are you mad?” Leo’s mouth hung slightly ajar and he quickly closed it, recovering in his seat. Perhaps Viktor was mad. The stories of him in the West, the way he’d swept in to unseat and exile his own _lover;_ they certainly made more sense that way. “… It’ll be dangerous.”

“As you already pointed out, I’m traveling with a Ranger, and I have luck on my side.” Viktor glanced over at Guang Hong, his blue eyes narrow and sharp. He’d taken quite enough criticism for one afternoon. “And as your friend has so bluntly reminded us all, I share responsibility with your former prince. If there’s nothing else, I’m leaving now. We’ll make arrangements to depart in a week’s time.” A glance towards both of the others assured Viktor that he’d receive no rebuttals. He stood, and unrepentantly pulled rank. “Your family guards a wayseeing stone,” he told Guang Hong. Viktor made himself the picture of perfect calm, but he felt unsettled, tossed about the way the Ardor had been at sea. Normally he loved storms. At present he felt at the edge of otherwise perfect control, still imbalanced. “I would like to use it.”

“Of course.”

He nodded, and turned then, taking several strides back towards the large wooden doors, and then paused halfway, looked over his shoulder at Leo, who still sat in his seat, fiddling with his hands. “… Where is he, these days?”

“Who?”

“Christophe.”

“… He’s still in exile.”

“Yes.” Viktor’s temper flared. He was intimately familiar with _that fact._ “I remember _that_ , too.” Leo frowned, still reluctant, and Viktor sighed heavily. “… Child,” he grumbled, entirely out of patience, “… The war between our houses finished a hundred years ago. What’s done is done. I am not here to reopen those chapters or revisit those ills.”

Leo glanced sidelong at Guang Hong, who gave a slight nod, and then spoke:

“… Nobody knows for sure, but there’s rumors. You might find him at the Oasis of A’ve Palmera.”

 

\- - -

 

The Wayseeing stone stood alone in a shrine the Southrons had erected to the heroes of the first age, resting atop a column of intersecting reeds that had been draped over with southern silk. It shone perfectly clear, transparent and yet as he approached it became opaque, responding to the intent of the call he was going to make. Viktor picked it up, wrapping it up in cloth; the conversation about the West had left him feeling strangely depleted, and he had no desire to stand. Instead he sat in a corner, rested the stone on his raised knees, and gently laid his hand upon the side.

 _Lilia,_ he thought. _I want to see Lilia._

It took minutes, maybe, before the elves in Ast Petyriel took note, before they got to his mother. _Vitya?_

She had such a severe, proud face, his mother; and yet the nickname, it undid him.

“… _Mama,”_ he murmured, hardly himself; he hadn’t called her that since his childhood. Not even at the peak of betrayal had he allowed himself the sentiment. “ … I have made so many mistakes …”

Before he knew what he was saying the story itself was ripped from him; the unrest plaguing the West, the way his own history had weighed on him from the moment of their departure from Mosciren, the fact that sooner or later there was a legacy of suffering he’d come face to face with again. Viktor had considered himself prepared for that.

He had not been prepared for the fire halfling with his unimaginable powers, or for the way he’d lost himself in a single caress. What revisiting _that_ did when he considered it in stark contrast to the past. _Can you imagine,_ Viktor scoffed, choking on every attempt to _not_ return to the tears of the morning. _I told myself I didn’t affection. Look at what it got me, the last time … So starving that a halfling’s kiss has me intoxicated, out of control, offering up little pieces of myself —_

Lilia listened for a long time, her expression unchanging.

 _I don’t think it would take just anyone to get to you, Vitya._ His mother, underneath the diamond exterior, was a poet. His father was the pragmatist. Viktor opened his mouth to argue and cut himself off; he’d wanted so badly to believe in Lilia’s world of righteous beauty, and not Yakov’s, of hard truths. He’d called for her in the stone and not his father. Lilia, who while physically separated from Yakov had never once bothered to deny the nature of their bond.

 _Your father and I are powerful forces,_ she’d told him once, before she’d left Mosciren for Ast Petyriel again. _Like the planets. Sometimes we are very far apart. It does not make our eventual alignment any less inevitable._

He’d always thought of that as a very strange way to love, had promised himself that he’d do differently. Then he’d met Christophe on the wheel; Christophe who was a high elf, too, and noble, and so he’d tried to _choose._ Tried to learn how to be close to him.

It was an unmitigated disaster.

 _Just make sure you’re not volunteering for this to get away from the boy,_ she said, when he’d calmed down enough to take deep, measured breaths.

Viktor laughed, dryly and without joy. He must have been terrifying, at Beltane. He would have fled, too. “Of course that’s why I’m doing it, mama.”

Lilia flashed a stern frown. _It’s not courageous to be brave in the face of one danger only because you’ve substituted it for another._

“The rest of the revelers need a safe path,” Viktor reminded her quietly. “Whatever my reasoning, we can provide it.”

_For everyone's sake, I certainly hope so. Give Yura my love._

“Always,” he promised.

 

\- - -

 

Kenjirou had been the first to check to see if he was awake yet; after the all-night festivities of Beltane it wasn’t uncommon to sleep through lunch.

Yuuri pretended not to hear the knock at his door.

After that it was Phichit. Yuuko. He smiled thinly and lied to them both, because the truth was complicated and this was easier for everyone: _I probably just had a little too much to drink._ Across all the miles between Shen-Osheth and Hasetsuil, the gentle waves of Hiroko and Toshiya reached for him, along with a smoky sliver of Mari’s curiosity. Yuuri pitched his thoughts far away from family, stayed away from the bond that knit the Katsuki clan together.

There was nothing else to think about but that dance with Viktor, how impossibly easy it had been; how he’d known without ever consciously thinking about it that not once would Viktor accidentally step into the ribbons of phoenix-fire, or smother him in water and ice.

Nonetheless it had been stupid to allow the kiss. Stupid to feel his cares lifted away for a moment on the rhythmic steadiness of Viktor’s heartbeat in his ears, as slow and certain as the tides.

His parents had an easy, gentle kind of love; soft and enveloping as the healing springs of Hasetsuil. He’d never known them younger, couldn’t really imagine the early stages of their courtship. They’d done nothing but offer him a net of safety, and then that first Samhain had come along, and everything Minako had taught him, had told them, the co-bearers of his secret by necessity, had not prepared anyone for that shattering.

By Imbolc they were always waiting, warm and ready and safe once again.

Viktor was something else. Fleeing the festival, Yuuri had only dared to look back once, and Viktor hadn’t been looking at him. He’d held one hand outstretched in front of him, studying it, impossibly still. Frozen like a statue. Quiet as the grave.

He was lightning and gravity. He was the strangest, fiercest kind of beauty. He was also the high prince, and Yuuri a steward, and there was an inevitable bleakness coming, a burden Viktor did not need to share. Perhaps in time he’d learn how to be satisfied with the one strange night, the magic of Beltane.

It had not really represented the reality he lived in, but it was a beautiful dream.

 

\- - -

 

“You could have told me how bad the wastes have been getting.” Viktor’s voice was strange even in his own ears; he’d meant for it to sound cool and hard, but somehow he’d twisted his own phrase, left it on the upward lift of a question he hadn’t meant to ask. _Why didn’t you?_

“I spoke with your father, when I joined the guard.” Otabek’s brow furrowed subtly. Pleasant conversation that had been, traipsing through the traditions of the high elves and attempting _not_ to place the blame that certainly belonged at their feet. He didn’t particularly feel like revisiting it here and now. “… He made certain assurances.”

“How perfectly illuminating.” Viktor cast a wry glance in Otabek’s direction. “I’ve just assured the Southrons that we’re going to clear the road. I hope you’re feeling up to it.”

Otabek glanced up, subtly surprised. Viktor’s intervention in the West was an unexpected variable. Perhaps it had something to do with the man he’d seen briefly in the earliest hours of dawn, showing, for a moment, every inch of the underlying fragility that Otabek had always known had to be in there somewhere. _Nobody_ was invulnerable. “It’ll be dangerous.”

“Are you afraid?”

“We have nothing to fear from the revenants,” Otabek murmured mildly. “It’s you they still hate.” He looked up at Viktor, decided to drive home the point: “What you represent. You _and_ your brother.”

“I know.” Was that something like the shadow of regret on Viktor’s face? “We’ll be careful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> starting to get to viktor's backstory now. explanations to follow for the next 3 or so chapters! telling you guys now that any questions you ask about christophe are not going to be answered until chs 9-10 so i won't be able to address them here. 
> 
> what i will say is this: one of the things i found so lovable about YOI was its complete and total lack of a villain. literally every episode of the show is about people discovering how to be a better version of themselves. and i think in some stories chris gets drawn in to be a bad guy sometimes, either in this really weird sexual predator sort of way or as like, the scorned ex, and i want to emphasize that he is not the villain and neither is viktor and i've got a very fine line to walk in the next 4 chapters or so about what happened with them but, tl;dr "mistakes were made."
> 
> two other asides - the next chapter has another one of those moments i've been looking forward to writing for a while. two of them really! also; regarding my research for lughnasadh when they head west there are gaaaaaaames. like a week of sports-ing. happy accidents, yay!


	8. whatever walks along (sword hearted) these night beaches

_Eight days after Beltane, 1017 II Age_

Guang Hong saw to their provisions, a kindness Viktor seemed to tolerate as they readied to leave. Horses, Yuri had been told, were unfit for travel across the Western desert, and so Guang Hong had made arrangements for alternatives: Yuri, Georgi, and Mila were introduced to large, sleek wildcats with thin, summer coats; and then Viktor came out from the fields leading a large, pale antelope with rising, twisted horns. It almost reminded Yuri of the deer that ran through the forests back home, but it was bigger, and followed on a soft braided lead that it seemed Viktor barely needed to use. “What will you be riding?” He’d asked Otabek, who’d looked over and nearly smiled in his own, subtle way, and then Yuri understood with sudden certainty:

Otabek was flying the _wyvern_ , could make it real enough, _tangible_ enough …

It was an image that stayed with him for a long time.

Now that they were traveling on the Sunset Road he no longer had to imagine it; their mounts raced along underneath the great shadow of the wyvern’s wings as Otabek guided his familiar steadily onwards and scouted overhead. Impressive a sight as it was, it brought new questions to mind:

Who was this, the Ranger who’d willingly come to serve in the court of his rivals, strong enough to command the essence of his magic to carry him and take flight?

Viktor insisted on riding armed; arrows were strapped to his back and he kept his bow held steady against his leg. Behind him, Mila carried a whip; Yuri bore a pair of swords, and keeping guard in the rear was Georgi, careful of his longspear. There had been a conversation, Yuri gathered, between his brother and Otabek: they traveled in the mornings shortly after sunrise, stopped for the peak of the day, and rode again in the afternoon. Safest from the revenants in the broadest light of day, he assumed, and yet: in the desert without water in easy reach Viktor would be at his weakest at noon. They weren’t there yet; perhaps then the schedule would change.

At the end of the first day’s journey they’d put’Shen-Osheth miles behind them. Even so, they were still well within the borders of the Eastern Kingdom, its lands kept safe by the magic Guang Hong’s family controlled, and by Shen-Osheth’s far reach. Now that the sun had gone down it was time for watches; Georgi and Mila and Viktor were already in the tents, trying to sleep.

“Otabek?”

“Mm.”

“How do your people tell the story about the end of the first age?”

Otabek’s dark eyes drifted sidelong, assessing him in a silence that was deep and dangerous, but not unkind. “Yuri, surely you of all people know that story.”

“I know how we tell it,” Yuri murmured. “I’m asking how your people tell it.”

Otabek sat there looking at him for what felt like a very long time, and Yuri steadied himself, held the banshee’s gaze, considered what he might say when Otabek declined, which was beginning to feel like an increasingly likely probability. Then the ranger looked away, his eyes fixed on the distant shadow of the horizon. “… Before the first age came at all there was the world and it was young, and it was given to the elves to steward,” he said, “and there were two tribes: the ban side who loved the night, and the aes sidhe, who loved the day. For centuries they coexisted together in a peace apart: the aes sidhe built mounds and made great and wonderful cities whose names are all forgotten now, and the ban side wandered under the starlight, tended the heart of the wilderness and the primeval forces leftover since creation itself. Back in those days there was nothing that lived which died, for there were no men yet; the world was growing but strangely unchanged, shaped by forces that the elves did not try and master.”

Yuri watched him in patient silence. There was something regal about Otabek, he realized, studying the strong profile of his face, lulled into stillness by the even cadence of his voice.

“It was the discovery of men that ushered in the first age. They were strange to the elves: enough like them that they believed closeness might be safe, and yet different in the only way that mattered. The aes sidhe watched the mortals age, uncertain, but it was the ban side who understood it first: the mortality of the humans. We came out from the wilderness to try to warn them of the strange silence of the end of a life, the way a soul could leave the body and drift, as though beyond a veil; something my ancestors could see and feel but never traversed themselves … ” He paused for a moment, tilting his head into a waiting palm. “The ban side understood well enough that the spirit didn’t disappear at death but the aes sidhe, lovers of the light, lived in terror of such endings, and this rift in understandings began to bend the separate peace of the two tribes into something else entirely. Meanwhile the men were clever. Their short lives gave them an unmatched spark of ingenuity, a need to make and to create, a desperation to find meaning. They grew in numbers and soon there were fledgling mages among them, weak magic users but magic users nonetheless. Always they tried to leave their mark on this world …”

He sighed. “The first aes sidhe to share a soulbond with a human mage suffered something unimaginable when her lover died: the shattering of a thing which had been taken for granted for all of time. The ban side who’d tried to warn her were shunned, sent back into the wilderness, where they counted the days until her passing from grief: she would not eat or drink, and so she lingered on for only a short while and then was gone: the first aes sidhe to die, herself. There were two children of that union, the first halflings, and even the aes sidhe knew enough to realize that this new creation, a hybrid of the two races, would not live forever. After that there could only be the semblance of peace between us. Slowly the ban side became ill omens and unwelcome guests, thanks to this knowing. Amongst the men they were always seen as harbingers of death, and slowly, as the years past, even the aes sidhe came to believe in this lie.” A subtle frown followed. “We are not sure who suggested the treachery first. Perhaps it was the mages, hungry for the magic they saw in the familiars of the elves; perhaps it was the elves, terrified of mortal doom. Our people would never have entrusted the elements to men. They were young, still, in our eyes. They had great potential, tremendous creativity, but to be responsible for a heart of magic? It asked too much of them. And yet this was the gift the aes sidhe gave them: the sacred secret of all of our magic. Soon the humans who could master magic bore spirits too, and they were shallow echoes of the forces borne by the elves in those days but they were guardians nonetheless…”

“But they lived longer?” That’s how Yuri had always heard it. That the teaching of familiars had given men relief from the imminence of death, given the more time. _The gift;_ that’s what it was called. Here Otabek was, speaking of betrayal.

“Yes. The human mages who mastered the gift lived for centuries that they couldn’t ever have expected to see. They celebrated this ingenuity, this momentary triumph over death. But it was the birth of the war: the idea that perhaps the veil could be beaten into submission, somehow; that it, too, could come under command. We knew better but there was no convincing our cousins. The ban side lost the great war the first day an aes sidhe chose to fade from the depths of a heartbreak no others had known to experience. _Perhaps,_ I think something insidious whispered, something sinister: _perhaps none of this would happen if not for the ban side. Haven’t they known about it from the beginning? Why can they predict it?_ And so the lovers of the light went to war against the lovers of the dark, and to ensure they’d win, they brought with them their newest creations: the mages, their eager pupils in magic, so ready to please and so much more willing to sabotage. We do not speak of the atrocities that happened after. For my people the grief of that loss is ever-present; there is not a night that passes when we do not wonder about a world that might look differently. What no one could have predicted then was the way the wild itself would react; the primeval, weirder forces the ban side tended began to shatter and shift without their shepherds. Without bearers of guardians to guide these magicks, they reacted with a grief of their own, and too late did any of the races notice the wraiths, the revenants. Only then did they declare a temporary pax, intending to beat these creatures back into the cauldron. The canyon in the East marks the front of that battle; the desert we will ride through is its consequence. They succeeded only in containing the problem that they had made, and only just: at the cost of so much of the aes sidhe power that their strength, too, was spent.”

Yuri was silent for a long moment. “But we couldn’t kill the rest of you. Because of the wraiths.”

“That’s right.”

“Otherwise we would have?”

“I have met enough of your kind now to think otherwise,” Otabek murmured carefully. “Though perhaps their voices and hearts were present then, too, a minority lost from both sides of the story … When the pax of the high elves and the banshee was declared permanent, when all of us realized that we would share the fate of men, not as immediately as them, but inevitably nonetheless; punishment for our sins in stewardship, perhaps: that was the end of the first age. And the start of the second.”

“… We call it the gift,” Yuri said quietly. “When we tell the story about teaching the mages. We say that the fact that they can do it at all must mean that they were meant to.”

“I have no doubt that the mages are grateful,” Otabek replied gently, and he offered a small smile, finally looking back at the blonde. “If anything, all these centuries later, I think what the sad tale of our tribes suggest is that there’s two sides to nearly everything on the earth.”

 _I’m glad you’re here,_ Yuri thought, with a strange, fierce fondness, and as they sat there together he leaned over and bumped Otabek’s shoulder with his own. “Beka?”

“Mm.”

“… You’re something like a Prince yourself, aren’t you?”

“I suppose some would think so.” The banshee shrugged his shoulders, wry. _You’re all so attuned to rank._ “But you can’t be a Prince without a kingdom, and my people have never had borders.”

 

\- - -

 

_Two weeks after Beltane, 1017 II Age_

 

Slowly the plains wound higher, giving way to a final range of foothills at the edge of the Southern Kingdom to cross over before the Sunset Road took them into the desert. Coming down from those slopes the world changed: they left behind golden plains for twisted rock formations, streaked with sandy reds and muted slates. For the first day Viktor traveled onwards in long-suffering silence, careful to keep himself under the shadow cast by Otabek’s familiar as it flew overhead. The banshee, despite his story about the people of the night, stoically insisted that he was fine in the sunlight, though Yuri couldn’t help but notice the way his wyvern vanished like grains of sand suddenly swept away by the breeze every time he dove downwards to land; the way he slept deeply and without dreams.

Viktor did not even let the stag run loose, smiled little, spoke less.

Otabek, unsurprisingly, proved to be an excellent scout. At the end of the first day they’d chased three different weak revenants out from hiding places in crevices of rock and stone; sent them northwards. They were small, and after hearing Otabek’s story, Yuri found them almost sad; creeping black things with no eyes and almost-shapes, like the magical forces his friend had implied they once were.

_Is this what the guardians would be, without our hearts?_

The first victory had been Mila’s. Yuri, overeager, had nearly raced to join her except for the way Viktor held back. The revenant reminded him of a bat, except for the subtle clouds of acid that appeared in the air, vaporized, a sort of defense weapon. The weasel’s coat hardened into impenetrable metal; Mila’s specialty, that, and her whip changed and morphed as she cracked it, and together they corralled the thing until it ran off towards the North, headed for the place Otabek had called the Cauldron, where he said all of the oldest things still lived.

It sounded like it was a place he’d seen.

 _Why aren’t you fighting?_ He’d asked Viktor.

_You and I have a legacy that Otabek thinks will attract them._

Georgi’s wolverine crashed lightning on the second, bursts of electrical charge that Yuri followed northwards until he could no longer see the crackling of static energy. The third they’d seen at dusk, creeping up on the edges of the camp, long after Otabek had landed; this time it was the banshee who walked up the edge of the dune, cloaked in shadows, and now that Yuri could make the comparison directly there was no denying the subtle similarities between Otabek’s magic and the warped creature he subsequently banished.

 _They were familiars,_ Yuri realized suddenly. _Once._

The guardians of the ban side. The guardians of the _murdered_ ban side; left as masterless and shattered as the woman his own people considered a martyr and a saint.

Now was the end of the second day and high clouds blocked out the moon, the stars; a sickly, poisonous grey. Looking at Otabek and Viktor was, in a strange way, like seeing the two sides of a mirror, each of them stoically ignoring weakness but also signaling it in similar ways: Otabek’s landings came faster now, with the wyvern usually gone before his feet fully touched the ground, and Viktor was always quick to dismount and shelter under an overhang of rocks.

Too much sunlight for the one and not enough water for the other.

Otabek, sitting on top of one of the stony, hard ridges, gave a long-suffering sigh. “Viktor,” he said, quietly but firmly.

“I know.”

“What is it?”

Otabek turned and looked at him, his expression grave. “They are coming.”

“Mila,” Viktor said warily, reaching backwards for an arrow, and loading up his bow, “Don’t let me use up all of our water.” He glanced upwards at Otabek, who jumped down as they each took up five points of an outward facing circle.

_If you intend to stay close to my brother, make sure he lives._

 

\- - -

 

The battle was _chaos_.

Georgi moved amidst the first wave of revenants slowly at first and then with a curious fury Yuri had never seen in him before. He’d always been so spurred on by his passions that the first time one of the revenants got too close a flicker of temper had _unlocked_ something in him and after that the wolverine had fought viciously, violently almost, with flashes of lightning that came as frequently as the summer thunderstorms Yuri remembered crashing over the peak of Mosciren. Mila twisted around him, graceful and agile, and more than once a metal barricade spring up between them and the dark magic around them: quick as the running of her weasel as it darted between enemies, and unexpectedly strong, too.

Viktor’s luck-imbued arrows sailed everywhere, shining with a dim silver light that ensured they wouldn’t miss, because time and time again they sank into the first wave of revenants, who each dissipated into thin vapor, and recollected weaker and struggling for the effort. Of all of them it was he and Otabek who moved through the fight with the most ease; Viktor because his every step was a matter of instinct and fortune: a burst of magic here opened an accidental space there, where, lo and behold, two of his previously fired arrows awaited, ready to be picked back up and shot again. He was trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, _not_ to call on water magic; it flared up from time to time, Yuri saw, whenever something got too close: a streak of brilliant blue that Viktor couldn’t avoid.

Yet every single time Mila seemed to see it, and shouted at him not to lose himself. There were miles still to travel. Water he used here came from _their_ packs.

Otabek was the one truly in his element, and as they drove the revenants back, he was the one who raced ahead to meet what came next. These were larger, and darker somehow — _wraiths_ ; and Yuri had been wrong to think of Otabek’s shadows as truly black. Now he knew what that color really looked like, darker than dark, pure void. Still, the ranger dispatched them with ease; seemed, at times, to almost command the lesser revenants and send them back.

… _Beka!_

The unicorn reared up behind him, fending off another wisp of ancient, broken magic; Yuri moved forward and smashed his shield, lit up with pools of crisp white light into the nearest revenant ahead, intent on following after the banshee. From what he could tell they — could the revenants be called _they?_ — hated his familiar; hated the incandescent shine of its horn and the way streaks of light burst forth every time it lifted its head.

Viktor’s silver luck and Yuri’s incandescent starlight; to these bent, broken things the two brothers were the real abominations.

 _Because we are the children,_ he realized suddenly, heart-sick: _the children of their master’s killers._

That was the legacy Viktor had referred to.

A legacy of death and vengeance.

 

\- - -

 

Viktor was _exhausted._ He felt wrung out, withered, struggling to replenish his own energy levels. The clouds had added no humidity to the air immediately around him, were too far to effectively pull on for liquid, which left him repeatedly reaching only for luck, a magic which was more instinctive, like putting together a string of happy accidents: surrendering his body up to the stag’s lead to make sure he was always in the right place at exactly the right time.

The revenants were gone. Yuri and Otabek had fought off three wraiths. Mila and Georgi were crashing through half a dozen shambling wights, having discovered the way her metals could amplify the burst of the lightning he commanded. They were behind him now, slowly chasing the wights back off to the north for a retreat towards the cauldron. He had no doubt the rangers would take note, pick up the stragglers, drive them back into dark places.

As he sent another silver arrow through the heart of a spectre, Viktor allowed himself to entertain the thought of a possible hard-fought victory. Then he heard Mila’s murmur of dismay. “No … Oh, _no_. _Vitya!”_

The shadow of the dragon was _huge,_ and it came crashing to the ground in front of Otabek and Yuri as the banshee raced forward, sent his wyvern into combat against a beast it could not possibly hope to defeat. The wyvern had been enough to cast a shadow over all of them as they cut across the desert; in the shadow of this twisted thing, it looked like a child; an emulation of what had once been.

The magic of the early earth had been different, then. Yakov had told him that much.

For the first time, Viktor saw it, the way Otabek, too, understood command; the way he stared into the beast’s chaotic, maelstrom eyes, held his ground and _insisted._

“You cannot have him.”

The dragon roared and Otabek stood his ground, held an arm out to stop Yuri’s advance.

“You _cannot._ ”

Then the two of them were swallowed by the fight, and Viktor was running, sinking the last bits of his strength into those silvery threads that connected everything; the distant chains of cause-and-effect that had always been there for him, sitting in the back of his mind, hard to conceptualize perfectly but nonetheless at his call.

The wyvern fought valiantly, and Otabek bravely, consistently ahead of Yuri, who was talented but inexperienced. Otabek was the one who knew what to expect, who anticipated, but it was more than that; Otabek had come out of the dark heart of the wilderness and promised to be a part of their guard. Otabek had insisted the dragon _could not_ take the unicorn; would not be made a liar. Nonetheless it was ultimately Otabek who was swept to the side with a vicious sweep of tail, perhaps because he’d been fighting on two fronts at once: against the beast, and to defend Yuri.

Yuri who was all that was left now, glaring down a dragon as he stood in front of the glowing unicorn, held onto his shield and his sword with hands that trembled from the crash and clang of their battle.

His little brother.

So angry: outraged over this bent and broken world, furious at the way Otabek had been swept aside.

Outmatched and unprepared for what was in front of him, and yet:

So terribly brave.

The light that shone next was the purest white, but it was streaked through and through with silver, and the last thing Viktor recognized was a cold deeper than any ice he’d ever known, a void worse than any heartbreak.

_Is this death?_

 

\- - -

 

Otabek, scrambling to his feet, had the only vantage point to see clearly what happened as it happened: the forward dart of Viktor’s body into the tight spiral of shadow and light; the stag in front of the unicorn, impaled by the black claw of the beast.

The dragon, nonetheless driven back in defeat because the ancient lights of the aes sidhe still had stewards to guide them; two brothers with magic that sparkled like the stars, too bright and too big for this ancient thing to endure. With a tortured, mangled roar that wrenched at his heartstrings, because once that creature had been something magnificent, probably, before the death of its masters, it took off, flailing on bent and ruined wings that smoked as though they’d been burned, limping off into the distance.

On the horizon he detected a thin, maudlin wail, and knew what fate awaited in the distance.

Georgi and Mila gave chase with shouts of fury and outrage; bursts of copper and electric bolts.

Otabek barely heard them.

Viktor was unconscious.

Yuri was screaming.

Otabek’s whole body hurt but he made it there, nonetheless, and though it hurt to ignore the way one of Yuri’s hands reached for him and clenched, desperate for reassurance, it was Viktor he examined first, kneeling to study his aura, to ascertain the flickering of a mortal life.

“Beka. Beka. He can’t die. He - he — Vitya, you _idiot —_ “

What Yuri saw was a man whose eyes had gone entirely black.

“Beka, what are you doing?”

Otabek tilted his head back and and in a clear voice; clear but thin, he sang a strange, somber melody.

“Beka!”

Only then, after the song was sung, did he let a hand drop to Yuri’s shoulder. “I can’t tell if it’s his time,” Otabek murmured. “I am trying to get him some help.”

 

\- - -

 

Yuuri was woken by the cold nudging of a dog’s nose and insistent, cool hands wrapped around his shoulder. “Wake up.”

He knew that voice; would recognize it anywhere. “Seung-gil?”

“We are leaving,” Seung-gil told him, gesturing to a packed bag he’d evidently taken the liberty of making. “We are leaving now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There is a strange song on the wind tonight. One of the Northerners is on the edge of death, Katsuki Yuuri.” Seung-gil tilted his head, impression impassive, and Yuuri let the words sink in, staring for a moment at the night’s strange messenger.

Minako’s words: _the phoenix puts the power of life in your hands, Yuuri. Will you give it to all who come asking?_

“Who?” One of the Northerners. He couldn’t imagine the _princes_ brought to that condition, and yet the mere possibility of Viktor in such a state had a strange effect on Yuuri’s chest, as though his ribs had suddenly gotten smaller, bent in on his lungs and threatening his heart.

Viktor who’d moved with him with such ease and grace, at Beltane, but who’d also left without saying goodbye.

“Curious. You would let the hound call some of them, but not all?”

“Nevermind.” Yuuri got out of bed. “Let’s go.”

Seung-gil never smiled but there was a strange flicker in his eyes that suggested some sort of shift. Whether he thought Yuuri’s change of words, good or bad, the banshee didn’t say. Instead he said four words that rattled around in Yuuri’s chest and would keep him riding through the night and the next day, and then make himself give off the magic that would keep himself and Seung-gil and their mounts riding without relief or rest.

“It’s the high prince.”

 

\- - -

 

_Two weeks, four days after Beltane, 1017 II Age_

They made camp. Yuri didn’t know how that happened but somehow it had; a safe place under another outcropping of rocks. _They won’t come back now. Not after that._ He’d been made useless by the silence that was _Viktor_ among the family link and the faint sense that in the distance Yakov and Lilia were _fighting_ over the current state of peril on some part of the bond he couldn’t reach. _Some prince you are._ It was a bitter thought, but it wasn’t enough to spur action; he’d only been able to heed Otabek instructions: Otabek who couldn’t be shaken by anything, apparently; anchored so perfectly to the world that it was all Yuri could do to hold onto his words.

_His magic’s nearly gone._

_Don’t you think I don’t know that?_ He’d been so angry. It felt like a lifetime ago, that anger. Viktor and his stupid, locked-up heart. Viktor who did everything _alone._ For all the cyclical enmity that arose from time to time between Yakov and Lilia, Yuri knew that if it was Yakov lying in the middle of the desert, still as a stone, it would have also been Lilia sitting stoically at his side, sharing her own magic reserves to help replenish his.

Viktor had nothing of the sort.

_You’re going to have to hold him, Yura._

_I’m not — it’s not going to be enough, and I’ll —_

_We don’t have time to talk about what can’t be done._ Otabek’s words had been sharp, then, terse; and yet, he’d followed them with the only way he could be gentle: _you try and help him. I will help you._

So they’d sat like that for days on end, making use of just one of the tents; Viktor, wrapped in pale wisps of white, one of Yuri’s hands tangled in his, and Yuri himself, wrapped up with creeping, subtle shadows, his free hand tied up in Otabek’s.

Mila and Georgi patrolled and tried to find water and said _nothing_.

Yuri tried to ignore the sometimes-sound of a second heartbeat, steady; was in no place to consider what it was that it meant or what he’d just agreed to. Whatever it was, it wasn’t strong enough; Viktor was a black hole, a steady drain that he could die trying to refill in this way and still have made no tangible progress. Magic poured out of him, and into him, cold and dark and different, from Otabek, and there was no one who was going to help Otabek get back what he was giving.

Every time Yuri thought of that he heard the heartbeat a little clearer.

It was Georgi who saw the others coming.

On the fourth day.

They’d traveled in half the time.

It was Mila who brought them into the tent.

 _Easterlings._ The halfling and …

“Cousin,” said Seung-gil, who put hands laced with fine, fresh scars onto Otabek’s shoulders as the banshee sagged backwards.

Yuuri’s eyes were locked on Viktor and Yuri hated the small sound he’d made, the gasp, the way he crept closer. “This is your _help_?” He asked of Otabek, feeling vindictive and small, helpless and _oh,_ so tired, so emptied.

“Seung-gil,” Yuuri said, his voice strained. “Is it his time?”

Seung-gil looked at Viktor, and then looked at Otabek, expression unreadable. Then he said, pointedly:

“I don’t know. _Is it?”_

Yuuri flinched visibly and then his whole expression changed and there were golden flecks in his irises:

“It is not.” Scarlet and gold magic gathered on his shoulder and solidified into a beautiful looking bird with warm eyes and a long, sweeping tail. “Leave me with him, please.”

“Like hell we will,” Yuri snapped, only to feel himself subsequently and roughly pulled back against Otabek, who shook his head in subtle warning.

“He can do it,” Seung-gil said, as though he didn’t care at all, one way or another, and he turned to exit the tent. “I suggest you let him.”

Otabek carried him out, ignoring every protest. Outside he staggered, hit a knee. _Beka …_

“It’s a strange game you’re playing, cousin,” said the other one, Seung-gil, who was looking at Otabek with that same separated dispassion, as though he somehow didn’t see how _brave_ Beka had been; how perfect and generous and loyal to people whom he owed, Yuri realized now, absolutely nothing.

Otabek’s voice sounded strained, and Yuri found enough of himself to be the one, for once, holding the two of them up. “I decided that things cannot continue as they are,” he said then, and let his eyes close, let himself sink a little bit more into the strange mix of glass edges and softness that was Yuri; Yuri who had such a fierce, furious heart.

_I decided to close rifts instead of perpetuating them._

_I decided those people are dead and it’s my life now._

 

\- - -

 

Talking to himself seemed easier than facing the present reality of Viktor unconscious, still as a statue, as _death,_ alone. Yuuri had barely heard the words of the other prince, the younger one; had only moved the moment the first magical links had been broken to get one of Viktor’s hands and sweep him up in gold.

That had not worked: Viktor was an aching void, and the sudden, hungry pull of whatever had hurt him made Yuuri’s head spin. “You can’t do that,” he chastised Viktor quietly, trying to _think._ “I’m sorry,” he admitted quietly next, sweeping Viktor’s long, silver hair away from his face so he could better see it for what it was: the cheekbones he’d admired, and the sweep of Viktor’s lashes, and the way even now his mouth had a quiet, playful curve. “This isn’t something I really get to practice, you know.”

He looked at the phoenix next, the bird which was physical and real now, and which had walked over to Viktor to nudge at his chin, and then looked up at Yuuri with sad and soulful eyes; _ancient_ eyes:

“Please show me,” he begged the spirit gently, on the edge of tears: “show me how to fix this.”

The bird let out a melodic cry, and subtle gold magic, like the shifting sands, swept over Viktor’s skin, unveiled the aura he remembered of silver and white and blue: tremendously faint and almost gone, but persistent nonetheless.

Yuuri realized with a start that after four days of _this_ anyone else should have been dead already, and it was a sobering thought, to realize he was the last chance for a prince of their people. _What if I fail?_ The phoenix gave another one of its songlike chirps, insisting that he could not, and that alone was centering. He had danced with Viktor for what had felt like an age of its own once, just the two of them, alone in a field; had kissed him, too, a kiss that had burst the world apart, been bigger than anything Yuuri had ever felt like could live under his skin.

 _I am not going to fail._ In the center of these last trails of magic was something angry and black and dark, a hole punched through whatever it was that Viktor was, and around it Viktor’s own magic twined and twisted and folded in on itself.

This was the thing that was going to have to go. This planted darkness. This void.

More golden light pooled into Yuuri’s willing hands and he crept over Viktor, reached for one of his hands again to press their palms together and knit up their fingers. Yuuri let their foreheads touch and closed his eyes, sinking for a moment into the reserves of his magic.

He’d been using it for days to get them this far and still the phoenix felt fresh and indestructible, strong and warm and summer itself, days reigning forever. Then he pressed a hand over Viktor’s chest, and sunk his magic into the place where that _thing_ had been, told the echoes of that deep darkness:

_You can’t have him._

It resisted. This was not quite like death. Yuuri knew death. This was hungry and lean and dark and whatever it was wanted to rip Viktor apart.

 _You can’t have him,_ he repeated, the whole of the tent awash in gold and warmth. _He’s mine._

 

\- - -

 

The burst of golden light that was seeping through the seams of the tent died as quickly and brilliantly as it had come, and Yuri made himself get up, stagger forwards, _check:_

The halfling had passed out against his brother’s shoulder, one hand on his chest, the other one threaded through Viktor’s fingers.

What mattered was the rise and fall of that chest, the steady breathing without its death rattle, without the rasp. _Vitya,_ he choked, and reached into the family’s bonds, found _Viktor_ there the way he was every night as he slept: silver and calm, undisturbed.

“Let them rest,” Otabek said gently, tiredly. “I’m going to sleep.”

Yuri looked at his brother, at the halfling, and then back at Otabek. Otabek who had given so much for so long now, and who had asked for nothing in return. “I’m coming with you.”

 

\- - -

 

When Viktor woke it was as though he was back home in Ast Petyriel, sleeping in the bed he remembered under overhead boughs; like he’d gone to bed after Yule and slept deeply, woke refreshed and revived. He felt strong and knew he _shouldn’t_ have felt strong; remembered a distant and deep darkness that felt far away because in his dreams there had been such a glow, gentle and powerful, unavoidable and inescapable.

There was a weight against the crook of his shoulder and another one, lighter, on his chest and as he cracked an eye open all he saw was a full head of dark hair, someone nestled into his side; a red bird with a beautiful, sweeping tail curled up asleep on his chest over his heart.

_Yuuri._

Yuuri, whose fingers were still tangled in one of his hands, and who’d thrown one arm across Viktor’s stomach as he slept; whose fingers had a possessive curl that was its own new discovery and, in a way, a fresh delight.

Viktor decided for the moment not to question it.

Whatever else had happened between them, in sleep Yuuri _knew._ He turned his head and pressed a subtle kiss against the crown of the halfling’s head and in the back of his thoughts something bright and cold and white came back to life.

With it came his memory, sudden and fresh; their ride across the desert, the dragon, the way he’d stepped into death.

_Are you awake, you big idiot?_

_Hello, Yura._

Lingering, cold silence persisted from his brother.

_I’m going to shout at you later._

_…_

_Aren’t you supposed to be lucky? What were you doing?_

_I was lucky,_ Viktor thought back: _I was precisely where I wanted to be._

He didn’t want to move, wouldn’t risk disturbing Yuuri’s familiar or the halfling’s rest. Still, the temptation to touch proved too strong a thing to resist, and so he traced a hand over the arm thrown over his stomach, then along Yuuri’s side, over his shoulder, up into the softness of his hair.

He was rewarded with a subtle burrowing, the way Yuuri turned and nestled closer into his body, even in the middle of sleep. On his chest the bird flickered, pooled into ribbons of gold and red, and disappeared, and Viktor smiled a little to himself, ignoring Yura’s vehemence and his insults to reassure his brother even as he turned into the halfling’s heat, brought him closer still:

 _I am lucky still,_ he reassured his brother then, taking a moment to evaluate the music of his own heart, singing again after a century, brought back to life: _even now._

Especially now.


	9. those deep bare vacuums between the stars

Otabek hadn’t bothered to set up a tent; sheltered under the rocks he merely unpacked his bedroll and stretched out on the ground, looking up at a clearing sky that was beginning to show inklings of stars and moonlight. After a moment, exhausted and strangely emptied of all his fury, Yuri did the same, and swept his white cloak over them both, turning on his side to study the banshee’s profile, lingering on the strong hook of his nose and the clear dark of his eyes.

The startlingly long sweep of his eyelashes against the high arc of his cheekbones.

“Beka?”

“Mm.”

“… I think I can hear your heartbeat.”

Otabek turned his head, then, but didn’t shift, fighting a bone-deep exhaustion that was going to leave him here for hours, recuperating in the dark. “I know.”

After that they slept; sometimes like stones, sometimes fitfully. Yuri awoke to reforming slivers of silver in the back of his thoughts and turned into the hard curve of Otabek’s shoulder. “He’s conscious now,” he said quietly, and then something Viktor thought woke up the hard edges of his fury again, had him mumbling insults as his fingers crept unbidden onto Otabek’s far shoulder and dug in. Otabek, who didn’t open his eyes and who still didn’t move, not really, though nonetheless he had this to say:

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

Viktor who’d jumped in the way of the void for him; Otabek who’d so freely given of himself to save a man who he couldn’t possibly have considered a friend. These realities caught in Yuri’s throat and he gave a half-strangled grunt of agreement, didn’t resist when Otabek pulled him closer and settled his head against the firm slope of his chest. There his heartbeat — a distant, reverberating echo in Yuri’s ears and in the back of his thoughts was steady and slow and real.

All of it was real. Dauntingly so. And here, terribly real also, was the son of the ban side, lover of the night, still giving when he had no obligation or reason to do so.

It was possible to be too tired, too angry, and too grateful to think, all at the same time, but even Yuri knew this: the slope of Otabek’s chin was just there, above his nose, and if he turned his head _just so_ he could kiss its edge, which he did without saying thank you, without admitting to the softer, gentler things at all.

Otabek always just seemed to _know._

 

\- - -

 

_Three weeks and one day after Beltane, 1017 II Age_

Yuuri woke to a slow sensation of rising and falling, coming out of a lingering dream about sunrise and beaches and the steady in-and-out churn of gentle tides, lapping at his ankles. He was wrapped up in and around something, warm and yet still tired, as though —

_Oh._

Viktor must have felt it, the stiffening of his frame, morning’s dawning realization, because he reached down and swept Yuuri’s hair from his eyes with one hand, and with the other he flexed his fingers to deepen the tangle of their hands. “Good morning.”

“Viktor.” Deep relief and deep panic swept through him at the same, exact moment. The one thing, rather like happiness, was the peak of a very high mountain, the sort of place he hadn’t been to in some time, where the view was glorious but the air both very thin and very heady. Then the worry hit; terrible, pressing anxiety because Viktor probably knew everything there was to know about magic. He’d want an explanation for this, for his sudden wholeness, for the way something had flooded through him and brought him back here where — Yuuri didn’t even have to _look_ — he could be examining a halfling with the subtle bow of his smile and a gleam of bemusement that made his blue eyes twice as dangerous.

Viktor did not do that. The mischief in his voice was too marked not to notice, though:

“Comfortable?”

Yuuri _groaned._

“I’m never going to live this down. And you’re never going to let it go.”

“No,” Viktor agreed, almost cheerfully. He felt young again, almost, like he was the inexperienced mage traveling all the high roads, working his way around the wheel. Hale, like he wasn’t in the middle of a desert without a water supply in easy reach of his magic. “Such a pessimist, Yuuri,” he teased mildly, turning his head to nose into the halfling’s hair. “You might get to live _up_ to it. Did you ever think of that?”

“… Are you always so insufferable?”

“As a general rule, yes.” Gods, Viktor’s _laugh_. It was deep and melodic and sparkling, and it had a way of rattling around Yuuri’s chest long after the breath of it had expired. Addictive. That’s what it was. He’d only heard it a few times and every time he wanted more of it; every time it left him hungry. He wiggled, trying with little success to get away from the tangle of their bodies, caught a glimpse of the way Viktor’s mischievous smile gave way to a sudden seriousness, deep as the seas. “The way I see it,” said the prince, not unkindly, “we can lay here like this for a little longer, _quite comfortably,_ I might add, and you can explain yourself in privacy, or you can go outside, where my brother is waiting and where you will quite literally need to commit treason by setting him on fire in order to escape questions.” He hummed and ran his fingers along Yuuri’s side, curled them into the dip of his tunic. “Your choice. I think it starts with your familiar, does it not? The bird that isn’t quite a bird?”

 _I can’t think when you touch me._ That was what Yuuri wanted to say, and some tiny part of his mind, the part firmly positioned against his own undoing, still insisted that he needed to get very far away from Viktor. Viktor with his mesmerizing voice and his heart-shaped smile. Viktor with eyes that were the very definition of blue, as though any appearance of that color anywhere else on earth was a memory of that original sparkling, a gift, an echo.

But it wasn’t what he _wanted._ What he wanted was this; this easy cradle they made together, and the knot of their hands, and the electric shivers just the idle sweep of Viktor’s hand set off under his skin.

What he wanted was the flawless dance, the brilliant fireworks. So what Yuuri said instead, in spite of himself, against every warning that _this ends badly_ was this:

“She’s a phoenix.”

“A phoenix?” Viktor’s voice plunged into amazement and distantly Yuuri imagined the firebird preening, having caused such wonder and awe from a man who must’ve seen everything already.

“You know them?”

“My mother used to tell stories,” Viktor murmured. “The only familiar that beats death, she said…”

“Not exactly.” It was an uncomfortable reminder, that, and Yuuri turned his head into Viktor’s chest, hid the memory of it by focusing on the nearness of Viktor’s body, the clean lines of muscle, the miracle of him alive and present this morning alone. It was selfish, perhaps; a weakness.

Better than facing an inevitable reality.

“My father said it was all wishful thinking and fairytales, made-up leftovers from the first age.” Viktor added with a derisive snort. Then he said something that surprised Yuuri again, in a voice that was low and tinged with hints of melancholy and regret: “… no wonder you hide it,” he murmured lowly, with a bitter, broken edge to his laugh. “Life … gods, we’d all come to you begging …” _Little addicts. Just like the ban side said._ _Give us more and more life. Give us light until we’re sick on it. Give us no darkness, no shadow._ “… We’d come to you at the end of lives wasted and spent and beg you to extend them, and you’d do it because you’re kind and you’d want to help and it’d be such a … such a … such an abuse.” In this version of Viktor’s voice there was darkness and cold, long lonely winters spent too long atop the peak over Mosciren, alone. When he used the next word he almost seemed to be speaking of himself:

“Criminal.”

Yuuri did not like this new twist to Viktor’s voice. It had hard, bitter edges; it was cold as ice and just as fragile. There was a strange shattering there, some history he’d never been let into before. Next to the sparkling brilliance of Viktor’s laugh, all Yuuri knew was that he _hated_ it, wanted to chase it away like the twisted spirits they must’ve been fighting long before he’d come.

 _You’re wrong about me,_ he wanted to insist, thinking of days riding across the plains; of feeding magic into the beasts that bore them and into Seung-gil even as the banshee flinched and burned under his grip. Yuuri could be plenty cruel. _Do it anyway,_ Seung-gil had insisted at the end of the first sleepless day, ignoring the scars that crept over his arms, impassive in the face of what must have been extreme pain. _Do it anyway or we’re not going to make it in time._

Instead he climbed over Viktor, tightened the lock of their fingers and let his free hand drift under the prince’s chin. Locked their gazes. “Nobody ever says that,” Yuuri said firmly. “Minako warned me. _They’ll all think it’s a miracle._ Tell me why you’re not angry I haven’t gone out healing every person I see. Tell me why you think that’s fine.”

“Because we brought death onto ourselves and it’s part of the natural order now.” Viktor’s gaze was guarded, almost practiced, and he _hated_ it. He was getting better at seeing it: those moments when Viktor hid behind his title and his heritage because it was easier than revealing anything like his true self. “Why should you do differently?”

“That’s a half answer, Viktor.”

“I have a guardian that _grants wishes_ , Yuuri,” Viktor snapped back, with a fierce and warning flashing of his eyes that reminded Yuuri of the ship, the crashing storm; the tantalizing edge of this dance with danger. “The _lucky stag_. Catch it and it’ll give you _anything you want._ Don’t you think I _know_ how dangerous that is? Don’t you think I’ve _lived_ it?”

There they were at the heart of the maelstrom, and all Yuuri could think of to do was to stare down at Viktor’s hard, icy eyes, and then at the sweep of his mouth.

_He almost understands._

Winter was a warning, a future that was going to hurt so hard when it finally came crashing, and still: _can’t I have this? Can’t I have this one little thing …?_

“I would like to kiss you, Viktor.”

Viktor did not respond in words; Viktor sat up and kissed him like a conqueror, all force and fury like the crash of the storm he’d once told to part for him. In that kiss, Yuuri burned away the edges of his anger, and slowly it gave way to gratitude, and at the end of it, Viktor’s subtle smile was back even if it hadn’t yet reached all the way to his eyes.

The second kiss was gentler, and it felt more like a promise. _I won’t forget this. Not now. Not ever._

 

\- - -

 

“Were you attacked on the way here?” Classic Otabek, in the morning, acting as though he hadn’t just spent the night out in plain view with one of the princes curled up against his shoulder. Seung-gil glanced back at him and lifted a brow, incredulous, and then finished sweeping his fingers over the fine, pale scars that were already beginning to fade.

“No,” he said, crisply and coldly. “It was the cost for coming so swiftly.”

“I see,” murmured Otabek carefully, though Seung-gil was reasonably sure he _didn’t._ Still, there was a calculating gleam in his eye and for a moment he entertained the idea of being relieved to see it. Once, Otabek had been a ranger captain, before he’d gotten the idea to head north, to see the highest of the so-called high elves for himself. Seung-gil had not liked what he’d seen in Hasetsuil, when the soldier part of Otabek seemed replaced with a newer thing, one that gave deference to people whom he owed nothing whatsoever. _Softer,_ he could have argued. This banshee who had seen firsthand the chaos of the cauldron and who had let himself dance, nonetheless, with the children of the aes sidhe. Seung-gil was not nearly so inclined to be forgiving. He let steady disapproval radiate.

Yet Otabek was not discouraged. “You knew the halfling could help?”

“I knew you weren’t really asking for me,” Seung-gil murmured, and he patted one of the dog’s three heads, glared idly at the rising sun. “You knew what I had to offer when you called.”

It was an answer to some question, just not the one Otabek had asked. “Still …” _Why him?_

“You asked and I brought you what you were looking for because of who _you_ are.” Seung-gil murmured curtly, and just like that, the conversation was over. _Don’t disappoint me._ “The rest isn’t my story to tell.”

 

\- - -

 

In the end he’d needed to do something other than sink into the soft warmth that Yuuri offered; Viktor was still cognizant of his responsibilities, of their place here in the middle of the desert, still at least a day’s ride away from the valley of the poles, the last obstacle between his traveling party and the rest of the West. That, too, was going to require a confession Viktor wasn’t yet ready for; admittance and perhaps the relinquishing of a weight he’d carried for too long of a time, a real reminder of it still hidden in the pack he’d carried ever since they left Ast Petyriel.

Besides, Yuri was outside, all boiling impatience, and if Viktor knew Mila at all he doubted she’d be content to stay on watch forever, kept at arms length from her revived prince. When he stepped out of the tent he was unsurprised to see the waiting weasel, standing up on its hind legs; less surprised to feel Yuri’s hands hit his chest in a hard shove, and then felt his brother’s fingers curl.

“You _bastard!_ You nearly died!”

It was an easy instinct for Viktor to wrap his arms around his brother, to sweep him up under the umbrella of his long, silver cloak. Like he was small again, still a child, an innocent. Viktor ignored the mutters of protest and the unsteady breaths, resting his chin atop the golden halo of Yuri’s hair.

 _Never again on my account,_ his brother swore, vehemence and brilliance. _Don’t you dare._ “Promise me, Vitya,” he growled, through the inconvenience of tears in those sharp, peridot eyes. “Never again.”

“I would push you out of danger a thousand times without regret or remorse,” Viktor replied calmly, even as Yuri shook, and thumped his chest, and he let his eyes drift over to Mila, who stood aside, shaking her head. Without a word he held an arm out for her, drew her in against Yuri’s back. Surprise flickered in her gaze for a moment over this strange, affectionate Viktor. Perhaps his near-scrape with death was to blame, had made him more eager to tolerate this closeness when he’d previously held himself aloof. “Where’s Georgi?”

“Sleeping. He took the night watch with the Easterling…”

 _I’ll go to him soon,_ Viktor thought, casting another glance around for the lean, dark figure of their banshee guide, propped up under the overhang of stones where they’d evidently made camp. “… Otabek?”

“Mm.”

“Thank you.”

Otabek inclined his head subtly, and then gestured back towards the blond still mostly hidden under the fold of Viktor’s cloak. “Thank your brother,” he murmured instead, gaze as fixed and serious as ever. “He kept you this side of the veil.”

“Who does he have to thank for that, I wonder?” Viktor mused idly, rewarded with another firm and painful _thump_ of Yuri’s fist against his chest, and then the younger prince was squirming out of his arms, putting the pieces of an aloof visage back together one by one. “You hear that, Yura? _Beka_ says we’re even.”

 _Beka._ Viktor had adopted the nickname so easily, and in doing, swept Otabek deeper into their circle, seemingly without a care. Yuri looked at Viktor for a long moment, as though he might suddenly grow another head like the strange dog that followed Seung-gil, and all he received in return was one of those inscrutable heart-shaped smiles and the infuriating, subtle mischief which really did mean he was himself again. _Alive._ The family link was once again whole. That was what mattered.

At that precise moment, Yuuri stepped out of the tent, and provided a perfect distraction from all of these considerations. “You,” the blonde growled, then, and he pointed to Viktor, the morning’s miracle, standing idly by in the flesh as though he hadn’t been on the very edge of death. In fact, Viktor looked better than restored; the rest of them all looked very much like they’d been traveling through a desert, and Vitya seemed refreshed, as though he’d just risen from Hasetsuil’s mineral springs. “Explain yourself immediately.”

“He’ll do nothing of the sort,” Viktor murmured. _Until he’s ready._ Before Yuri could simmer on this further, he glanced towards Otabek. “I’d prefer we travel this evening.” Mistakes had been made on the ride out. He’d been overconfident, perhaps; couldn’t pay the same price for his assumptions a second time. “Will it be safe?”

“Nothing is _safe_ here,” the banshee reminded him, and then he closed his eyes, seemed to have the attitude of someone listening to something far away and distant, something none of the rest of them could hear. “Nonetheless. After the battle we’ve just had I imagine it will be mostly uneventful to the valley.”

“Good.” Viktor had learned his lesson about heat; there was a difference between the way Yuuri burned under his fingertips and the unforgiving drain of the sun. They were going to need their strength. With two banshees riding along now he did not begrudge traveling by moonlight. “We leave at sunset.”

 

\- - -

 

Sand steadily gave way once again to reddish stone as the sunset road wound further west. For some time on the first overnight ride, Otabek’s wyvern held low to the earth, gliding alongside Viktor’s large antelope. They spoke in lowered voices, two tacticians debating the strategy of the last obstacle before the climb into the West. Riding just behind,Yuri studied the foil they made for some time, until his brother gave a curt nod, and Otabek flew up suddenly, floating overhead until his decrease in speed brought him back to Seung-gil, who’d taken rear guard with his giant hellhound.

Soon afterwards the gate to the west rose on the horizon: a large, sandstone arch, the last of its kind on the sunset road. “We camp here tonight,” Viktor said, which explained the decision that had been made well-enough. They’d be crossing the valley in the morning.

 _They’ll have the advantage before dawn,_ Mila argued over dinner, an incredibly light affair on their dwindling supplies of Southron bread. Viktor had looked rather pointedly at Otabek and Seung-gil, standing at the edge of the circle of the camp. _I like our odds._

Then Otabek had chimed in to agree: _it’ll be mid-day when we exit,_ he pointed out, _they may start strong but that endurance will wane._

_So take the second half in strength._

The halfling. When they’d made camp, Viktor had made another change in plans: _you sleep with me._ That, too, was news, and for a moment Yuuri’s eyes narrowed like he might protest or was planning to resist. At nightfall, nonetheless, he’d crept into Vitya’s tent, leaving Yuri outside, where he told Otabek stories about the constellations until they both fell asleep.

Now it was the thin hours just before dawn and they were looking down at the descent into the valley that ran north into the Western kingdom, the last obstacle to safety. Viktor stopped at the mouth of the incline, gesturing Otabek forward, and then slowly they began to make their way: the banshee in the lead, followed by Viktor, Yuri, and then Yuuri. Mila and Georgi closed in behind them, and Seung-gil brought up the rear. The Easterlings carried no weapons. _Ridiculous,_ thought Yuri, but he didn’t have much time to think at all: the downward incline was treacherous, even with the agility of the large desert cat he rode. Otabek had no such worries, gliding all the way to the bottom in a downward plunge with the wyvern that was all brutal, military grace, a perfect reminder of just how dangerous he was, and yet: Otabek’s fingers had dusted feather-light through his hair; when he slept Otabek always lay as still and as calm as the tranquil surface of a windless pond.

Making their way through the valley was a different sort of fight than the one they’d been in before: the revenants here were small, and Seung-gil sent the three-headed hound ahead to chase after them, all growls and yips and barks but no _actual_ magic. Otabek, too, seemed reluctant to hurt these early shadows; seemed to command them away and gave off a subtle air of satisfaction and relief when they crept up the sandstone hills, presumably to begin the long trek back from whence they’d come. This meant swift progress for their first hour, as the sky began to show subtle hints of rose and pink overhead. Dawn was coming soon. A glance backwards showed that Yuuri knew that, too; his weird red bird had gathered, translucent, resting on his shoulder and in a strange way seeming to get more and more real by the minute.

It got harder.

Soon Vitya was shooting silver arrows ahead, warning shots, missing on purpose to give the banshees a chance to try to command the shadows away. The first wraith marked the moment when that strategy was no longer going to work, and before it could engage Otabek in combat at all, Yuri summoned a flare of white light to hit the spirit directly in the chest, and chase it away. The look he received in return was wry, a momentary reminder _not_ to attract attention to himself.

They fought onward. The sun rose and he became aware of flashes of magic all around them; red and gold from the Halfling, whose hands kept pooling with flame. Beka’s shadowy, inky black. Vitya’s silver.

The hound of Seung-gil snapped its teeth and barked but Otabek’s cousin cast no spells. By now Yuri had called the unicorn forward, because as much as the spectres hated _it,_ hated _him,_ they hated the light his familiar cast even more; avoided it at all costs, slunk away simmering when hit. Yet it was also the call for more; more of these bent things to come and wreak vengeance on an ancient enemy.

Vaguely he heard his brother shouting a warning: _Mila, look out,_ but it turned out not to be needed in the slightest: the sun crested over the edge of the hills now and the scarlet bird flew overhead, bringing with it a tail of flame as it swept across three flying spectres, who, licked with tongues flame and a sheen of glittering gold, seemed to catch fully on fire and then turned white, evaporated like mist.

Yuri blinked. _Did he just kill a spectre? Three of them?_

It was as senseless as Viktor returned back to complete health, had no possible explanation.

Spectres couldn’t _be_ killed.

 

\- - -

 

Sandstone gave way to granite, which in turn gave way to subtle signs of life: squat, stubborn bushes that had dug into the hills and simply refused to die. It was a sentiment Yuuri might’ve agreed with, if he’d had the time to consider it properly.

They fought steadily onwards, and as sunlight crept overhead and shadows began to recede so, too, were some of the revenants, though Viktor wasn’t satisfied with letting them creep back into hiding holes where they might waylay the next band of travelers; the remainder of the Easterlings due to come west and the Southrons, too. Though he’d begun the morning at full strength, the elven prince looked flushed; his stag translucent and almost invisible in the heat of the day. Otabek and Seung-gil moved more sluggishly and even Yuuri, Yuuri who held every advantage now, felt his hands tremble as he cast off more streaks of golden light.

Seung-gil was the only one who hadn’t used any magic at all, and Yuuri knew perfectly well why.

Surely they had to be close to the end by now. He remembered the fraught Western road well enough from his own trip around the Wheel, but this was different; this felt like every spectre within a reasonable radius of miles had come for them. First it was Yuri, who was far too liberal with the sweeps of white light that he cast, and then Viktor, whose arrows were never wasted, shot surgically and always recovered.

Then they’d noticed him and had come like moths to a flame for _whatever_ it was that the phoenix offered; not death, it could never be death, but whatever it was it was as draining as healing Viktor had been, and there were more of them, all made of that same core of void he’d had to wrestle out of the prince’s aura. Up ahead the valley yawned open, revealing rolling, grassy hills and a stroke of deep, dark green in the distance that marked the buildup of forest.

 _So close._ He did not want to have to face down another _dragon,_ like the one he’d heard Mila talking about with Georgi. Surely they wouldn’t have to, not now, not after all this fighting …

Yuuri heard but barely perceived the rumble of the rocks as though they were alive, saw but did not process the charging swoop of a giant griffin. Magic sparked everywhere: something new, the color of burnished copper; with it a streak of light blue, and like that the last of the revenants were gone, and in front of them were two riders on horseback, who both dismounted immediately.

The griffin landed with an echoing rumble behind Jean-Jacques Leroy, who watched Viktor for a long moment with conflict brimming in his blue eyes, before he bent a knee. Behind him a halfling mage with sandy brown hair and a short beard did the same, his slate-colored eyes fixed on the ground.

“Prince Viktor,” said Jean-Jacques, calmly, though his fingers were clenched, and a subtle resentment still simmered in his eyes: “welcome to the West.”

Viktor stood there looking at them both, trying to school his expression into something neutral and unreadable; thick and impenetrable as the glaciers that reportedly churned steadily on even further to the north of Mosciren, impassible. Yuuri was learning to read the changing tides of his eyes, though; recognized that same sliver of bitterness, of loathing and remorse.

“Stand up, both of you,” Viktor murmured. His stag vanished immediately, and he dismounted to step forward, moving out under a carved sweep of granite that Yuuri recognized as the northern guardian of the valley.

It was over, finished. “We all know I’m not due that sort of deference here.”

 

\- - -

 

_Imbolc, 917 II Age_

 

Was there anything on earth more dangerous than Viktor, wearing one of Hasetsuil’s festive flower crowns, laughing and dancing his way through the processional of guardians with his fully-formed stag? Christophe very much doubted it. Following along with an idle smile, python twisting over his shoulders, he couldn’t help but chuckle at the Northern Prince’s antics.

 _Who knew we’d be on the wheel at the same time,_ Viktor had mused, when Christophe had arrived in Ast Petyriel with the serpent draped over his shoulders. It had been easy to ride up from Vaux Romandith to share the story with his oldest friend. They’d grown up together, and though Christophe would never feel the full weight of royalty the way Viktor did, under Lilia and Yakov’s watchful eyes, their long overdue heir, he understood the upcoming pressures of leadership well enough. _Shouldn’t have questioned it, I guess,_ he said next, and he’d leaned forward then to press an absent kiss to the edge of Christophe’s temple. _Of course we would be._

The High Prince of the North and the Prince of the West.

Not lost on either of them were the subtle expectations that followed so close a friendship. Sometimes Viktor leaned into it a little too hard, like if he just worked at it enough, he’d wake up one morning content to get things over with, to forge a bond with his friend and so unite the North and the West. It was wholly beyond Christophe to discourage him. There was charm in Viktor’s smile and danger in his kiss and slowly, he too started to think that maybe it was just a matter of time.

Arriving with his familiar in Ast Petyriel, Viktor had wanted to know _everything._ Non-elemental magic was strange and poorly understood; as near as he could explain it the python had something to do with feelings, gave him little flashes of insight about how his people were feeling. It had been overwhelming at first and then it had given him a boost in confidence, had helped him travel down to the valley of the poles to reassure the people living there, in the borderlands, that the sorts of dangers that sporadically crossed the sunset road were never going to be allowed in their homes.

He felt stronger. _Charismatic,_ someone else had called it, and then among their people the word had stuck. Christophe, the charismatic Western prince. Viktor, the mischievous Northern one.

Everywhere they went was trouble. This was trouble now, Viktor pulling him into the dance they kept trying out, except now that the truth was something magical, staring him in the face, Christophe had a hard time ignoring the difference between the fierce fondness of friendship and the sparking, dangerous thing that ran between Viktor’s parents and had a life of its own.

_You’re not going to settle for just this._

Later, long after the festival, with his python curled around Viktor’s arm, and the stag resting its head on Christophe’s knee while he traced a finger over the antlers; _incredible,_ that Viktor could keep it fully formed all the time like this, so early on; _lucky,_ even.

 _This would be so much easier if you actually loved me,_ Christophe thought, wished even, because he didn’t love Viktor like that either but it’d be nice to build a stable, steady life; tolerable, and it’d make so many people around them happy. It was a careless thought, all wishful thinking, looking into the calm eyes of Viktor’s water stag as he held it. What a strange combination that was. And yet sometimes, like now, there was something else there; a kind of silvery thing that sparked and lit up which they hadn’t figured out yet and which Viktor himself couldn’t describe.

He felt it wash over them both. Not the wintery water magic Viktor had been showing him all this time. Something different. Something else.

Viktor turned to look at him and the whole world was suddenly different, because that fierce fondness was gone, the brotherly-love of it. He spoke as though Christophe had said the words aloud, and the whole world came crashing down:

“What’s that coming from, Christophe?” His blue eyes were clear, placid as the sea, subtly tinged by a bit of purple Christophe recognized because the python’s magic was purple, because he’d been working so hard to make sure when he used it he wasn’t manipulating anyone. The distance in those irises, the way Viktor kept secrets sometimes, all of it was gone, and more devastatingly so was his playfulness and his mischief. He was too eager to please now, creeping closer, sweeping his lips along Christophe’s cheek:

“Of course I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

 _Oh, gods._ Viktor’s hands brushed over his shoulders, possessive; Viktor’s tongue swept into his mouth.

_What have I done?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Piyo13 isn't mad at me by the end of this chapter I will consider that tightrope I just walked with Mr. Giacometti and Mr. Nikiforov a success. As I wrote in notes for the last chapter it's really important to me that I do this carefully with Christophe and I hope I've managed to convey what happened (or at least the start of it; the next chapter will tie things off for them) without making him into a villain.
> 
> We've also seen the downside to Viktor's luck magic; familiars like his and Yuuri's always come with a price. 
> 
> This chapter was hellishly hard to write; hopefully it doesn't show too terribly. >>


	10. gone are the days when you could walk on water

The party automatically shifted as they rode onwards to Vaux Romandith: Yuri, protective of his brother, raced to ride behind him, and Yuuri, with a curiosity he was terrible at hiding, did the same. Like Otabek, Jean-Jacques rode the griffin he’d summoned, though Emil was on horseback and stayed close at hand in a way that was reminiscent of Yakov’s guard, back at Mosciren. Jean-Jacques seemed inexperienced and a little bit brash, though; a strange choice for a leader.

Yuuri was pretty sure he didn’t know all of the details. The East had been far removed from the old conflict between North and West; in what little was told of the story nowadays it ran something like: _the Northerners once decided the Western heir was unfit to rule, and removed him from power._

So perhaps Jean-Jacques was the child of the new order. He certainly had no love for Viktor, though Viktor hadn’t remarked on it since their strange exit at the mouth of the valley. Instead he’d turned his mind to logistics, which Yuuri noticed was a way to keep the Westerner talking, and which, mile by mile, seemed to be slowly settling Jean-Jacques’ nerves. “How did you know to come and meet us?”

“Shen-Osheth sent word ahead by Wayseeing Stone.”

“I see.” Viktor paused for a moment and Yuuri watched him choose his battle, fascinated: “And it was worth attending to personally?”

Jean-Jacques’ navy eyes drifted sidelong. “It would hardly be honorable to let you die on our border,” he said with a calm that he clearly did not feel, given away by the subtle twitching of a single muscle in his cheek. _Not befitting of a ruler._ Then he nudged the griffin, and sent it skywards, joining Otabek’s banshee without so much as another word.

Viktor took the slight well. Yuri rolled his eyes, and looked up to fix Jean-Jacques with a stone-cold glare:

“Idiot — “

“Yuri.”

_Vitya, he just insulted you!_

_He’s got plenty to be angry about. Let it go._

Yuri’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he stared at his brother’s back. Viktor, the high prince, had a reputation for replaying slights. He wasn’t particularly vindictive; that trait often fell to his younger brother instead, but he’d never failed to craft the lesson that there was a _distance_ between him and the rest of the elven class, to reinforce the legends of his own invulnerability. _Did you hit your head, too, when you nearly died out there?_

Alongside him, the halfling shifted to stroke the long, graceful neck of the desert cat, and Yuuri became the next recipient of Yuri’s narrow eyes and sharp stare. _Is it the halfling’s fault?_

Silvery laughter trickled into his thoughts and Viktor glanced back over his shoulder, flashing a subtle smile. The antelope he rode slowed; fell into pace next to Yuuri’s cat. “His name is Yuuri,” he reminded Yuri mildly, and Yuuri’s fingers clenched in the short fur of his mount.

“You were talking about me.”

“Of course we were talking about you,” Yuri muttered, shaking his head with a scowl. “You and your fire and your _secrets_. I’m riding with Mila.”

 

\- - -

 

_Three weeks and four days after Beltane, 1017 II Age_

It was a two day ride across the plains into the giant redwood forests of Vaux Romandith, which themselves were twisted around a deep lake the color of dark sapphires, the result of centuries of rainfall into an ancient crater. The city itself rose into the trees: spiral staircases wound around the great trunks, leading up to the halls of the Westerners, joined by a matrix of rope bridges and wooden archways. _Make camp in the meadow of Feyriath,_ Jean-Jacques instructed brusquely at the gates of the city, and at least he sent Emil to help. It was strange to come upon the woodland city so early in the season: Yuuri still remembered it when the meadow was packed with multi-colored tents, set up for the games of Lughnasadh. That was where the real brightness of the West shone most clearly: as harvesters they were strong and they celebrated their strength with sports and games, the likes of which he’d never played back in the East. The meadow would be empty now, though Solstice was coming soon. The peak of summer. He’d only ever seen that festival from Hasetsuil, and once, traveling the Wheel with Phichit, from Shen-Osheth, the last time he’d taken the sunset road.

Vaux Romandith, city of the harvest. It was a simpler place than even Hasetsuil was, with some parts of it shrunken and emptied, the built-up ghosts of some earlier, better time. Yuuri had come to appreciate the Westerners for their pragmatism and determination in his previous stay, but now, with Viktor riding through the streets, he watched their clear-eyed gazes become a little cloudier: some suspicious, some worried, some brimming with the same sort of resentment which burned so obviously in Jean-Jacques.

Viktor did something Yuuri had never seen him do: he pulled up his hood, and rode on more quickly, in complete and total silence. Spurred on by instinct he nudged the cat forward, closer even, and reached out to touch the prince’s shoulder. Underneath his fingertips, Viktor _flinched_ , and then he stilled, and after a moment of further silence, he took one hand off of the antelope’s lead and laid his hand over Yuuri’s.

He still did not smile.

 

\- - -

 

Viktor’s serious mien stayed with him long after they’d set up tents in the meadow, a big natural hollow nestled above one edge of the lake. Gone were the camping provisions that had been rolled up in their packs; these were the festival pavilions. Emil quietly helped them set up two of them, before insisting that they were guests of the city, and could call on him if they needed anything at all, before making himself scarce.

At sunset, Yuuri found Viktor skipping rocks on the shore, never short of a perfectly smooth pebble to toss for one-two-three-four-five impressive bounces. His boots were neatly piled near a piece of driftwood, along with a woven bag, and he’d rolled up his pants to his knees, standing barefoot so that the water might lap at his ankles. The stag, too, stood on watch nearby; opaque and intangible and still, something each subtle wave passed completely through. Yuuri released the phoenix, letting it dart lowly and neatly over the water after every rippling circle leftover from Viktor’s idle toss.

“You don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to,” Viktor murmured quietly, without looking back, his blue eyes fixed ahead on the water, following the low curve of Yuuri’s bird as it flew. “In fact you probably shouldn’t.”

Everything would be simpler if he _didn’t,_ but it was impossible to pretend like he hadn’t gone to sleep calmer listening to the steady rise and fall of Viktor’s breath. Equally foolish to ignore the way he always crept closer as they slept, woke up with his chin propped against Viktor’s shoulder, his arm thrown over Viktor’s waist. Yuuri understand flight well enough to not begrudge the initial fall.

“Why are they still angry with you over something that happened a century ago?”

Viktor sighed heavily, and leaned over to sweep his hands through the water, rinsing off his forearms. It felt good to be clean again, after the long ride from Shen Osheth. The water at Vaux Romandith was crisp and cool, nothing like the healing mineral springs of Hasetsuil, but just to be near it after so many days in the desert was a comfort. “They were very fond of their Prince,” he admitted softly. “Loyal. More loyal to him than to my father … he was …”

_He was my best friend, once._

There was a reason he hadn’t come to this place since the last time he’d left it. “Removing his house from the royal order seems to have had more consequences than I had the foresight to imagine at the time,” Viktor admitted, and this time he brought water up into his palms, splashed his face. “They have every right to resent me for it. They’ll resent you by association, given the chance.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should.”

“I don’t,” Yuuri emphasized quietly, and he stopped at the same dead log, sat down, took off his shoes. Moving to set them alongside Viktor’s, he caught a glimpse of what was in the canvas basket: soaps, evidently, probably part of the hospitality basket Emil had left behind, and he found himself trying and failing to stifle a quiet laugh. 

 _That_ was enough to get Viktor to turn and look at him, curious. “What.”

“Everyone thinks you’re untouchable,” Yuuri murmured, reaching down for a bar of soap, and holding it up with a subtle, playful smile. “Stick you in the desert for a week and evidently the first thing that’s on your mind is to come take a bath like all the rest of us.”

It was gratifying to see Viktor’s shoulders ease up a little, after that, to see the faint edge of his smile. “Try not to let the word get out,” he said wryly, though his eyes were kinder and his gaze was fond. Self-deprecation didn’t suit him somehow. “It’d be terrible for my reputation.”

It always made him imagine that he could be brave, that little smile. Yuuri made another decision without giving it any conscious thought. “Turn around,” he said then, and when Viktor raised an eyebrow, so unaccustomed to people telling him what to do, Yuuri picked up one of the pieces of pressed soap, and tilted his head. “I’ll be just a minute.” Realization hit Viktor’s blue eyes and Yuuri couldn’t help but smile a little bit further. Only he ever made Viktor look like that. “Don’t worry,” he quipped, feeling summer-strong: “I won’t tell anyone that you blush, either.”

Viktor’s brow rose further, but he turned nonetheless, and for a brief moment only, Yuuri had the unparalleled pleasure of watching him pull his tunic over his head, shaking out the long platinum of his hair.

Then the shirt hit him in the face. Viktor always had _perfect aim._ “We’ll see who’s blushing in a minute.”

Something else to keep a secret: the way Viktor’s eyes fluttered shut when someone else washed his hair, and the way the long strands of it bled like liquid silver over Yuuri’s fingers. Or the way he sputtered, utterly surprised, and then laughed, when splashed in the face, before revenge came on Yuuri in the form of a perfectly summoned, crashing wave.

Back in the meadows Georgi, Mila, and Seung-gil had already settled into one pavilion; deference, probably, on the part of the Northerners and avoidance for the latter. Viktor, walking back to the camp with Yuuri’s hand in his own offered only the faintest of smirks when he saw Otabek sitting outside, stretched out on his beck halfway between the two tents.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” he said dryly, and then Yuuri followed him inside, changed with no small amount of gratitude into a fresh set of sleeping robes, and laid down next to Viktor.

“… Besides,” Yuuri murmured, as his mind drifted back to the conversation they’d started to have about exactly this, about the room he was sharing as though it wasn’t especially significant: “You’d do things differently now, wouldn’t you?”

Viktor turned on his side, propped himself up on an elbow. “… Yes.”

“Can you help them now?”

The sweep of Viktor’s fingers over his shoulder and down his side was an enchantment all its own. Viktor seemed to be doing it for his own good, reassuring himself of something, perhaps, though Yuuri couldn’t quite say what. “I’m not sure,” admitted the prince lowly. “Maybe.”

“If anyone can, it’s you.”

Viktor leaned forward, pressed his lips to Yuuri’s forehead, smiled a little sadly at this show of faith he hadn’t earned from the halfling into whose hands had been put the gift of life itself. _You think far too highly of me._

But then:

“… Why did you run away, at Shen-Osheth?” Yuuri’s breath caught in his throat and he froze, leaving Viktor scrambling to find something to fill this sudden and harsh silence with. “I was … too forward, I lost my senses for a minute, I admit that —“

“No, it wasn’t you.”

“Then what?”

“I’m …” Yuuri didn’t want to look at him, and so he inched closer, let one hand clench into the softness of Viktor’s robes. “Soulbonds frighten me,” he said, which was the absolute truth, told incompletely.

“Ah.” Viktor sounded brittle again, like Yuuri kept treading on some unknown, dangerous ground. “That makes two of us,” he said dryly. “Will you tell me why?”

“… Not tonight,” Yuuri begged, and Viktor glanced down at his curling fingers, white-knuckled in near panic. “Please.” Viktor reached for the hard lock of his hand, and gently unraveled Yuuri’s clenched fist, threaded their fingers together, brought the knot of them briefly to his lips.

The kindness of it made Yuuri’s chest constrict, nearly undid him. “I’m trying to figure it out,” he apologized, still frantic and at the edge of his terror. “How to explain it, how to —“

“Shh.” What had he done that had been so remarkable, to be entrusted with this other side of Viktor, soft and cool and all-encompassing as snow: “We’ve got plenty of time.”

_Do we?_

 

 

\- - -

 

_Three weeks and five days after Beltane, 1017 II Age_

The next morning, Yuuri woke not the way he was getting accustomed to, nose turned into Viktor’s throat, but alone, listening to Viktor rummage around through the dark. He sat up, let his eyes acclimate, watched as the high elf stole about the room:

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving,” admitted Viktor with another one of his wry smiles. “Something I need to do.”

 _And you were going without saying goodbye?_ Yuuri was terrible at hiding his feelings; Viktor swept his fingers along his cheekbone, having read plainly the flicker of consternation on the halfling’s face. “Since you’ve caught me in the act,” he murmured carefully, trailing off for a moment as he weighed the options:

Was it right, to bring his present along for the collision into his past?

Yuuri, whose face was soft and still curiously guarded, studying him like this. Yuuri who’d stepped a little bit out of himself at the lake the night before, whose fingers in Viktor’s hair had been paradise and whose mouth still made him think of spices and honey, sunrise and Beltane bonfires.

Christophe would be able to read it as plain as day, this problem of possessiveness, the way his fingers sometimes darted of their own accord to slip over Yuuri’s shoulder or down his back as they slept.

Christophe would know it for what it was, the contrast between now and then drawn all the clearer.

“Yes?” Prompted Yuuri, the _halfling he was in love with._

It was probably selfish and a little bit cruel, but Viktor didn’t relish the thought of going alone. “… You get to decide whether or not you’re coming along.”

“Where to?”

“An oasis, evidently.” Viktor tried to make light of it. A’ve Palmera, unless Guang Hong’s friend had been lying, unless his luck finally ran out. “It’s a four day ride East towards the canyon, and if we’re tremendously lucky at the end of it there might even be another bath.”

“Why aren’t you telling the others?”

“I’ll explain it to Yuri later,” Viktor replied softly. Once they were a good enough distance away. Once the odds that Yuri demand Otabek track them down were a little bit lessened. _He won’t like it but he’ll understand._ “It’s something I need to do …” He paused, tilted his head. _Alone_ wasn’t the right word, not when he’d just invited Yuuri along. “… Let’s just say … the smaller the retinue, the better, I think.”

 

\- - -

 

_One week after Samhain, 917 II Age_

He’d tried and failed to fix it in Hasetsuil, dodging Viktor for a week in the hopes that the _problem_ might just _go away._ Problem was, after the first day Viktor had this strange habit of coincidentally being headed wherever it was Christophe thought he might run off to: he was on the beach, he was in the Springs, he was studying with Minako, he was fortuitously everywhere, he was _calamity_ incarnate. Seven days later, Christophe was cornered between Viktor and the sea, trying to answer the question _why are you avoiding me_ while tears sprang up in his Prince’s eyes.

Maybe he should’ve found a way to lie, tried to break his heart then, but Christophe couldn’t wish him ill, had opened his arms up and made up a story about how soulbonds intimidated him, now that he had the python familiar, and he just wanted to be careful until he had its magic all figured out.

Viktor had nuzzled into his neck, blueish eyes the wrong shade entirely, and nipped at his ear and whispered _it can’t possibly affect me, Christophe; I already love you._ Christophe had been grateful that he was the one with the wild empathy magic, sparing Viktor the impression of how strongly he’d wanted to vomit.

He’d tried and failed to fix it on the ships to Shen-Osheth. Quarters were too close; Viktor, often times forgetting his rank always crept closer, as though he belonged in Christophe’s arms; got snappish when he wasn’t nearby. Made it impossible to _think_ because his hands tended to wander and he’d been a good kisser _before,_ when they’d been playing at trying to stumble into an arrangement that might make everyone happy, and this was worse; way worse.

It sickened him at Beltane, trying to use his own magic to undo it. _You don’t love me. You don’t._

 _Christophe,_ Viktor had laughed then, like it was a joke, hilarious; drenched him in a crashing wave and another one of those kisses to drown in: _quit practicing on me, it’s not going to work._

Viktor who swept them up into silver and white and blue before Christophe could really object. Viktor who hadn’t wrangled him into a soulbond just yet but whose heartbeat he could hear plainly without even thinking about it, like that last step was simply inevitable.

At Lughnasadh, Viktor entered into three of the games and it was only there that Christophe could finally see the solution. He won in swimming; that surprised no one, water mages tended to. Then he’d gone on to the sword-fights, where he caught perhaps one or two lucky breaks to take the title of champion away from a crowd favorite. Perhaps that wasn’t a surprise either: in Viktor’s movements, Christophe saw all of the grace of his mother, agile, swift; in his blows, the merciless fury of his father: the stark King and Queen of Winter, brought together in their son.

Then Viktor took the bow, and stood there with the stag, solid and tangible at his side, and Christophe watched as arrow after arrow sailed perfectly home into the heart of each target.

He remembered it perfectly, the strong breeze out of the West.

Impossible conditions for any archer.

_It wasn’t just you._

_It was the stag._

Viktor’d been terribly pleased with himself after that, happy and humming in the circle of arms he’d crafted out of habit. At Samhain, he excused himself from the dance to speak, for a moment, privately with Lilia.

 _I’m leaving in an hour. Promise me you’ll find Viktor after._ Lilia’s expression never seemed to change, but Christophe had never felt so laid bare, so exposed, so perfectly desperate. _Take him back to Ast Petyriel, he likes it better there…_

_What is this about, Christophe?_

_He’ll tell you then. He’ll be in his room. Promise me. Please._

Then he’d brought Viktor back to his room in the Alcazar of Mosciren, and he’d kissed him on the forehead and knelt down to touch the stag like he’d done, unwittingly, unknowingly, a hundred times.

Viktor watched him with the soft, adoring smile that he’d learned to hate. “I don’t really have words for this, Viktor …”

“We’re a bit beyond words, aren’t we, Christophe?”

“Shh.” _Gods,_ this was going to _hurt._ Christophe took a deep breath and prepared himself for the shattering. “I’m really sorry that I have to be the one to teach you this, Vitya,” he said, surprised at the way his own voice was already caught in his throat, the way he was already crying.  _I wish you didn’t love me,_ he thought, and like that the heartbeat was gone, and Christophe learned something too; the way his own magic could make him feel ill, when someone else’s heart broke.

He fled because he couldn’t stand it, couldn’t breathe. In Viktor’s bag he’d left a letter with a dozen different apologies; already Christophe knew they were not going to be enough. He'd felt the sadness as it broke over Viktor like a tidal wave, and he'd felt the realization, too, and then he'd understood the depths of Viktor's rage.

 

\- - -

 

_Four weeks and two days after Beltane, 1017 II Age_

This time Viktor bought their horses. He’d gone to a stables and then he’d _insisted._

Heading northeast from Vaux Romandith was a steady, uphill slope back out of the valley with its emerald woods, and then a winding, provincial road. It led across another strip of rolling fields, these tended by farmers who hardly looked up as Yuuri and Viktor rode by; Viktor kept his hood up, and did not stop to engage in any smalltalk. For a while the road clung to a small creek, but eventually this deepened into a second, smaller lake and after that Viktor had not been joking: beyond the fields they climbed up into the steppes and there was no water. Yuuri liked the summer heat, felt at ease; Viktor did not entirely share his enthusiasm. He’d never been here before, but Viktor seemed to know the way.

_Doesn’t this head back to the cauldron?_

_The cauldron is southeast of us now. We won’t see any danger._

On the end of the fourth day brush and stone and sand gave way to a circle of trees in the distance, sudden and stark and out of place amidst all the sandy rocks.

“We’re here,” said Viktor, and he stopped to dismount, and led the horses in.

 _A’ve Palmera._ There were old songs about this place; Minako still sang them sometimes, and Yuuri hummed the mournful tune of them under his breath. Ahead a looming statue had lost almost all of its detail, washed way by time and sandstorms, but he remembered a little about the old legends; about this last outpost between the kingdom of the Aes Sidhe and the wilds where the Ban Side roamed. Around them other rocks looked too purposeful to have been mere accident; these were ruins, Yuuri realized, crushed structures of a battle from a millennia ago. Among them, though, was an adobe villa; more recently carved out of the stone, and Viktor smiled sadly when he saw it.

Someone was already walking out to greet them, followed by what looked to be an enormous snake, and then that person, whoever it was, froze where they stood.

“Christophe,” Viktor said, without smiling.

“… Vitya.” Yuuri’d heard the nickname from Yuri and some of the other Northerners as they’d traveled and wasn’t sure, suddenly, if he liked the use of it here, among people who were supposed to be enemies. Christophe stared for a moment, and then shook his head as though to clear it. The snake reared upwards, and for a moment its reptilian eyes flickered purple before _Christophe_ banished it. Christophe was a name Yuuri had heard of before, too.

The once Prince of the West.

“Well,” Said Christophe, who had force of will enough to summon an impish smile yet. “Don’t just stand there and stare. Might as well come inside.”

Inside, Yuuri discovered, was no less awkward than outside: Christophe wasn’t alone at the house, though he waved off the pair of mages who’d stared at them all, slack-jawed, and then cleared out its guest hall of other, equally disapproving elves.

“Couldn’t come out here alone —“ Viktor mused idly, looking around, and for that comment he found himself fixed with a hard stare as Yuuri found a seat in the far corner, as far away as he could get from these two royals, who’d once played at war.

“Don’t.” The mercurial smile was gone. Viktor did not sit. Christophe did. He sank purposefully into a chair at the head of the table, folded his long, lean legs, and rested his wrists across the arms as though perfectly at ease. “I gave you what you came for the last time you were here,” he said coldly. “Friendless and without family were not on your list of demands, at the time.”

“… About that,” Viktor said carefully, and he drew a chair back from the table and sat down with care. It scraped against the floor; Yuuri nearly winced. “I regret that.”

“Regret!” Christophe laughed, clapped his hands as though delighted, but in both of these things Yuuri saw the same jagged edges he’d witnessed from time to time in Viktor. “You’re a hundred years late to the party, Vitya.” He turned then, and fixed Yuuri with another one of those strange stares, and laughed again in subtle amazement.

Yuuri couldn’t quite help himself. “… Sorry,” he said, carefully, _anxiously._ “What’s so funny?”

Christophe smiled and this time it wasn’t one of those angry smiles. “I do not think he could have picked someone more completely the opposite of me to fall in love with,” he teased with a momentary flash of white, white teeth and a coyote’s grin, words that made Yuuri’s heart skip a beat.

“S-sorry, _what?”_

“You have to admit it’s a little bit funny, Vitya.”

Viktor sighed and shook his head; reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. How long had it been since he’d suffered these jokes? A century. _Gods_ , a whole century. That’s how long.

He’d laughed more, back then. “… It is,” he conceded dryly, because Yakov didn’t know and Lilia didn’t know and Yuri only suspected, and by Samhain he suspected his father was going to come home with two sons both attached to precisely the sorts of people they weren’t really supposed to love, “perhaps the slightest bit humorous.”

“ _He’s_ in love with _me_?” The heat had gotten to him. Heat never got to Yuuri and here he was, experiencing a mirage, in an oasis. That or his sister had suddenly gotten very good with her magic and the past few months had all been a trick. He turned from Christophe to Viktor: “ _You’re_ in love with me?”

“Obvious, really.” Christophe snorted. “He brought you here, didn’t he? What an event to witness, what, you took the Vaux Romandith road right? For this meeting of minds.” Those sharp eyes flickered back to the Northerner now, completed a perfect eyeroll. “Gods, Viktor, you are the _actual worst._ Let’s get this over with. Nothing ever happens here and the suspense is probably killing the stewards. Why are you here?”

“I have something for you,” Viktor murmured, and he reached into the knapsack he’d brought along inside, and from it he pulled out a burnished circlet; a _crown,_ Yuuri realized; rather like what he’d seen on Kenjirou and on Guang Hong and even on Viktor. This was the color of copper, looked like twisted stalks of wheat. Viktor set it on the table and for the first time since they’d come in, it was Christophe who looked shaken.

“… Give it to Jean-Jacques. Apparently he’s in charge now.”

“Give it to him yourself,” Viktor replied idly. “Solstice is coming.” Then he stood, strode back to Yuuri, and held out his hand.

“W-wait! That’s all? You just come here, you drop that on the table, you —“

“No. I’ve had a four day journey and I’m tired of you already and I want a bath.” Viktor looked over his shoulder, and his smile was thin but it was a smile nonetheless, an actual effort that hadn’t been quite so hard as he’d expected. “I’ll let you tell your _staff_ that we need a guest room.” His brows rose and Yuuri swore there was something there, some playfulness, some mischief: “I’m sure they’ll love that.”

“Viktor, wait —“

“Christophe.” This was a warning. “… It was a century ago and we were both idiots and I’m _tired_ of hating you.” This time Viktor did not look back; he threaded his fingers into the warmth of Yuuri’s hand, gave the halfling’s palm a gentle squeeze. “I still think you should have found a way to break it sooner. But I … I clearly overreacted.”

“ _Overreacted_.” Christophe echoed, incredulous. “You marched into my country and demanded I step down and when my people told you no you _occupied_ us!”

“Nobody listened to me when I got here,” Viktor muttered, and he turned around, and suddenly Yuuri felt like he was watching two teenagers arguing. Viktor was pointing at himself with his free hand. “High Prince?”

“Prince of the West!”

“ _Ex-_ Prince of the West. It shouldn’t have mattered. My father is _the King._ But all they wanted was you. So much loyalty, Christophe …” Viktor sighed heavily, and suddenly the fight in him was gone, as quickly as it had come, the way flash floods sometimes ran over the floodplains in the East during the spring’s thunderstorms. “I still think that magic of yours is dangerous.”

Yuuri blinked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “I still think you _ruined_ my _country.”_

“Well,” Viktor exhaled, and this time he really did make for the door, “as long as we’re clear on both points.”

“Peace, then?”

“We aren’t friends.” Viktor muttered, his eyes narrowed. “But we are staying for a few days. You have a villa and —“

“And you hate deserts. And camping.”

 _Confirmed._ Viktor's elusive smile flickered back to life. “And I hate deserts," he agreed. "And also camping.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god, christophe always just picks up a whole life his own. he's irrepressible. here i am thinking this chapter's going to be some serious shit and here comes christophe giacometti walking out of his exile desert villa making jokes like viktor didn't once personally hand him the trauma of a lifetime. then he proceeds to reduce the two of them to being young morons again for a hot second there? such maturity, these two. who put them in charge, really?
> 
> also: viktor may be an elf, and don't get me wrong, he loves nature, but he's also been traveling in the heat for weeks, and let's be real for a minute ... he's also entirely too attuned to luxury. so you know what else that makes him? a glamper, that's what. #bathsmatter
> 
> this chapter and next are pretty light like this, mostly, i think. we shall see!


	11. that the deity who kills for pleasure will also heal

Viktor had not been wrong about the shocked silence that followed them everywhere through Christophe’s home in exile; one of the mages rushed to air out a spare room, and then it was Viktor magically summoning the water to bathe with up from the oasis. _Your turn,_ he’d told Yuuri, sitting on a stool at the end of a bathing pool with an idle, expectant look that had sent Yuuri’s heart leaping into his throat. Now it was Viktor who was massaging some subtly perfumed oil into his hair, who hadn’t needed to reach for the pitcher to pour water over Yuuri’s head or onto his back.

It was relaxing and intoxicating and strangely humbling. Yuuri’s family had been stewards of the Hasetsuil baths for generations and here was the High Prince of the North, _attending_ to him. They’d said relatively little; Yuuri was journey-tired and Viktor seemed contemplative and the silence that stretched was comfortable, something he hadn’t felt the need to fill up with words. Except, maybe, for the parts of the conversation he’d just witnessed, particularly the bit Yuuri kept replaying, where Christophe, who he’d only ever heard of as some distant enemy of the Northerners, had so casually used the word _love_ and then Viktor hadn’t denied it. “… Viktor?”

“Mm.”

How could any of it possibly be true? “I don’t really understand what any of that was about.”

Viktor’s response came slow, but the drip-drip-drip of water and the slow brush of his fingers through Yuuri’s hair didn’t still or cease. “It’s funny,” he murmured, not unkindly. “The way you can dread the retelling of a story for decades and then Christophe just comes along and rips it out of you…” Though this sounded unpleasant, there was no derision in Viktor’s tone; he seemed strangely devoid of anger or even real energy. Viktor leaned forward, folded over the edge of the bath, and draped his arms over Yuuri’s shoulders, pressing his lips for a moment to the back of the halfling’s neck. It made Yuuri’s shiver.

“We were best friends once, Christophe and I. We’re nearly the same age.” Viktor sighed and shifted again. “It’s a long story,” he added, thinking back to the Ardor and how unwise it probably was to leave a fire mage submersed in a bath while he recounted the whole miserable tale, no matter how appealing it would’ve been personally. “… let’s get you out of here and I’ll tell it.” _Let’s_ was something Viktor did, too, with that same twist of magic that pulled the water off of Yuuri’s skin and left him dry, a brush that felt more intimate now than it had on the ship when Viktor’d been reacting in the middle of an emergency. So, too, were the way Viktor kept to the little details, helping Yuuri into one of the silk robes as though, for a moment, _he_ was the one who was royalty.

The room they’d been given was a corner of the villa, looking away from the oasis, and the windows were thrown open to let in the night air. Netting stretched over the open screen kept insects away from the oil lanterns strung overhead; beyond this the night sky glittered deep and black and distant, but the stars shone crisp and bright. Viktor, who Yuuri had begun to realize had a certain acclimation to luxury, seemed subtly delighted to have a proper bed to sleep in again, and he said nothing as Yuuri stood at the window looking out at the stars, moving over to it to rearrange the pillows and then sit. “Come here,” he added after a moment, gently, and so Yuuri did, and didn’t protest when Viktor rearranged them, leaning up against an intricately carved headboard, Yuuri’s back against his chest, chin resting atop the halfling’s drying curls.

“It took Yakov and Lilia something like five hundred years to actually decide they’d be a bonded pair,” Viktor murmured quietly. “My father … he’s always had an idea in his head about restoring the high culture of the elves, the first age. Their parents, my grandparents, wrote and signed the pax with the ban side at the end of the war, but didn’t live long afterwards, so much of their power spent, long lives waning in the new age … The wheel, the tradition of it at least, it predates the four kingdoms, and it gave all of them the idea of using the four cities of the festivals as capitals, a way to distribute power to hold the revenants from the war at bay. My grandparents selected these families from among their generals, at the time; Minako’s family you know, and the house of Ji, and Christophe’s family in the West, who’d been their advisors for as long as anyone could remember. Actually there’s a phrase my mother has about it that you’d like: _the healing hearts of the east,_ she says, _the open arms of the south,_ and _the penetrating minds of the west.”_ Viktor’s fingers, ever restless, always mapping out the edges of Yuuri, as though testing if he was real, drifted down Yuuri’s arms and over the backs of his hands.

“My parents have … it’s interesting, the two of them. I’d never tell you that they don’t love each other. But it’s a volatile kind of love. Maybe an ancient sort. I can’t pretend to understand it. They’re very alike and yet they’re different in every possible way that could make two people tolerate each other. Father has exacting _expectations,_ wants to see triumph and victory, the preservation of the honor of the North, the restoration of the old ways. Mother has high _standards,_ wants to be involved in beauty-making but is uninterested in conquest. I don’t even really know why I’m telling you all of that.” He chuckled dryly, and Yuuri caught one of his hands, and turned it over, tracing the lifelines on Viktor’s palm while he spoke. “Except maybe to try and explain away some of my own bad behavior, when I was younger. It made me afraid of finding a love like that, of being hopelessly attached to someone I couldn’t hope to understand — no, not that even, they know each other perfectly — someone I couldn’t live with, because they can’t manage it, and always I was running back and forth between Ast Petyriel and Mosciren, spending this decade or that waiting for them to reconcile. Meanwhile Christophe … Christophe is heir to the West, the military advisors of a past my father’s spent his whole life hearing about, and the Princes we built perhaps the closest relationship with. Yakov has never agreed with the South’s decision to open Shen-Osheth to so many non-elvish influences, and while Minako is my mother’s student, for years he saw Hasetsuil as soft…”

“… I got it in my head back then, that maybe I could just will my way into love. What Yakov and Lilia have always feels dangerous, sharp as swords, and I thought it’d be better to find something more comfortable, less risky. Safe. Christophe should speak for himself but there’s no denying that back then literally no one would’ve been upset if we’d walked into the halls of Mosciren or Vaux Romanith and announced a soulbond. That’s how I decided that if you worked at it hard enough, you could make yourself fall in love with someone. Maybe _because_ I decided it he felt obligated to play along. Or maybe he’d reached the same conclusions. This was back before either of us had familiars, early students of magic, unquestionably a foolish idea but nonetheless safe and easy and fine. Like child’s play at actual love.” Yuuri closed his eyes, and tried to drift into a picture of a younger Viktor, a younger Christophe. It was hard to imagine, like some Viktor he couldn’t quite reach.

“Just two idiots pretending.” Viktor, on the other hand could see it perfectly, those lazy, selfish days. He glanced down at Yuuri, looked over his shoulder at their hands together, wondered how he’d thought he could’ve ever been satisfied with the _production_ of a kiss, nearly put on for a show, instead of this simple ease and the idle hunger of his fingertips. Touching Christophe had been a routine, something he’d constructed to _practice_. Touching Yuuri happened like it was breathing; he never noticed when he did it and yet when examined it was the actual miracle, utterly unconscious but the stuff of life itself, like blood and air and heartbeats. “Then the spirits came. I got the stag, all snow and ice at first and then after the winter began to loosen coming into Imbolc, water; Christophe came up to Mosciren with his python, we realized we’d be completing the wheel together. _Feelings,_ he told me, back then; _I’m hoping Minako can explain it better but I just look at people and I see them differently …_ Flashes of color, I guess, in auras, or connections, little insights he could never really explain to me. Whatever it was made it obvious we didn’t love each other, not in that way, but we set off for Imbolc and the way he explained it later, not that I had any appetite for being understanding, was that he’d been petting the stag — I used to let people do that, back then, and made this half-hearted, empty wish about how much easier it would be, how much more convenient for everyone, if only I just loved him.”

Yuuri’s breath caught, thinking back to Viktor’s words in the middle of the desert, out on the sunset road:

_The lucky stag. Catch it and it’ll give you anything you want. Don’t you think I know how dangerous that is? Don’t you think I’ve lived it?_

“That’s how you found out,” he said, suddenly _horrified_. “About having two magics.”

“That’s how I found out,” Viktor agreed, and suddenly it wasn’t enough to simply sit in the loose circle of his arms. Yuuri turned around, kneeling in the space between Viktor’s bent legs, studied his face in the uncertain flicker of lantern-light. “Life and fire,” Viktor murmured fondly, tilting his head a little to the side as he returned that open-ended stare, smiling softly at the way the lantern’s gentle flicker lit up the warm backlights of Yuuri’s eyes. “Fortune and water.” He reached up to sweep a hand through Yuuri’s bangs, brushing them back. “Christophe thought it was his fault, the empathy magic, it’s unpredictable and it can be amplifying in its effect; it’s why, I think, his people miss him so much. He tried to undo it, and even I remember that part, the way I kept feeling these wild swings of mood, but it was never enough because neither of us knew: it wasn’t his magic. It was mine. He says he couldn’t leave me stuck like that and pining, so off we went, around the wheel, and in retrospect I suppose it was better him than anyone else, because there are things people could do with the son of Yakov slavishly in … well, not love, I don’t think, but something like love, that I’d never had to think about before and I’ve been —“

“Careful ever since,” Yuuri finished in quiet understanding, thinking of the bitter way Viktor had laughed, brought back to health in that tent in the desert: _we’d all come to you, begging … Criminal_. Criminal was the word he’d used. Yuuri was beginning to understand why.

“I started a bond with him, even,” Viktor admitted, glancing off towards the open window and the subtle breeze. It was dry and hot here, but even the memory of the waiting oasis outside was a little soothing, settled his magic and therefore his nerves. “Every time he tried to pull away I panicked and so it seemed like the way to keep him. We didn’t finish it, I don’t think it would’ve worked, but … He _pretended._ That’s what I found so unforgivable, later. He says he figured it out at the games for Lughnasadh. I’ve always liked archery but I didn’t miss a single bullseye. So we traveled one city further, until I was back at Mosciren where he could leave me with my family to deal with the fallout, and he caught the stag again and made his second wish and the whole thing broke: I fell out of love like someone had thrown me off of a cliff, and what little bond I’d been able to force on him while under the whole spell of it snapped like a twig and I’ve never been so angry with someone in my entire life. I blamed him: my magic might’ve sealed it but who knows how strong it would’ve been on its own without the influence of his?” Viktor sighed and looked back at Yuuri. “Yakov was furious. This was before my brother was born, but gods, you could feel it in the family link, the constant, hard edge of his anger. It was a betrayal of the old order, this rejection: nobody got to just throw off the love of the High Prince like that and go unpunished. I’m not going to blame him either but it was a convenient angle for me: a way to wrap up all my hurt in outrage instead, and to insist Christophe lacked the sort of control over his powers that he’d need, left in charge of the West. With my father’s backing I came back down the King’s Road to depose him.”

For the first time, Viktor thought he detected something else in Yuuri’s gaze; something strange and conflicted and hungry, out of the bounds of the story itself. “… You look troubled,” he said, pausing for a moment.

“It’s just … It’s …” For a brief moment he’d heard Viktor’s heartbeat, steadier and calmer than his own, amidst the fires and music of Beltane, and Yuuri had fled it, terrified of that same kind of breaking. _Nobody got to just throw off the love of the High Prince like that and go unpunished._ “Finish your story,” he insisted, shaking his head. “It’s not relevant.”

“Isn’t it?” Viktor asked quietly, because there was a subtle undercurrent of fear and anxiety in Yuuri’s gaze that he couldn’t place. Nonetheless, he decided to proceed: “… Naturally nobody listened to me,” Viktor quipped dryly. “In their eyes I was a spoiled, scorned lover, and Christophe was their rightful leader, and that only made things worse, so we came back and removed him by force. I took the crown of the West and left Vaux Romandith in the care of the Stewards and told Christophe to leave, and now here he is, and here we are, and that’s the end of the whole, sorry tale. Two stupid and selfish princes looking for the easy road found the hard one instead. If the first age wasn’t enough of a warning about how to _be careful what you wish for,_ maybe this ought to be.” He paused. “Do you think less of me for it?”

“No,” Yuuri murmured, definitively, sure of that much at least. His answer came swiftly and firmly enough that curiosity came to life in Viktor’s blue eyes, and so he scrambled to explain why: “… All the stories about you are … you’re a living legend, you’ll be in songs long after your parents are forgotten, Vitya …” The nickname came unconsciously and there, too, was a flickering in Viktor’s eyes, the one place where Yuuri was learning how to read his passions more plainly. _Vitya._ The name everyone close to him used. “They all say you’re the strongest elven mage of our era. This … it makes you … it proves you’re a real person, not one of the old gods walking the earth anew. And I … I think I understand quite a bit more about the _who_ of who you are, and not just the _what_.”

“I learned something else coming out of all of this,” Viktor said carefully, with a subtly rueful smile. “Christophe wasn’t wrong, though he shouldn’t have been the first to say it …”

“You mean —“

“I’ve learned love isn’t a feeling. If it was Christophe could break anyone’s bonds, could make them, even.” Viktor leaned closer, nose to nose with Yuuri. “Love isn’t a mood,” he breathed, and his hands had once again taken on a life of their own, pulling the halfling closer. “Love is a force. Or: love is like magic. I thought all this time I could choose it, and here I am, and it’s chosen me.”

He was going to spend the rest of his life nourishing it, tending it, making it grow.

“Now I’m going to choose back,” Viktor added against the corner of Yuuri’s mouth, and Yuuri felt tears prick his eyes: “Over and over and over again if I must,” he said, and swept away the fine river of one salty streak down Yuuri’s cheek. “I decided I century ago it was better and safer to be alone but traveling the wheel again with my brother, it’s made all these memories clear as day. I stumbled on you at dawn and what _this_ is, it’s nothing like that.”

 _Over and over and over again_ were words that did not stop reverberating through Yuuri’s bloodstream, worked their way into the marrow of his bones, and he couldn’t hide the desperation in his kiss, hoped only to soothe the hurt of it: _if I must._

_You’ll have to, Vitya._

_You won’t have a choice._

“Yuuri,” Viktor breathed gently, his name little more than a whisper left on the soft edges of his own lips, “why are you crying?”

He owed it to Viktor to explain, somehow, but couldn’t; not now, wouldn’t ruin _this._

Yuuri swallowed and told the truth that lived behind all of his fears about the future, the terror he someday needed to be able to articulate to Viktor in return:

“Because I love you too.”

 

\- - -

 

_Five weeks and six days after Beltane, 1017 II Age_

Audible murmurs followed them through Vaux Romandith: _can it be?_

_It is, it’s him! That’s Christophe with the High Prince, I can’t believe it —_

Christophe’s expression was one of wry bemusement, and rather than make for the high redwood halls amidst the trees, he sent the mages onward and followed Viktor and Yuuri to the meadow instead.

“What?” Christophe inquired of Viktor’s back, although Viktor had said _nothing,_ and their week at A’ve Palmera and the four day journey back had taught Yuuri to expect this of the Westerner, who picked up on things that tended to go unspoken. “It’s been a hundred years. I want to meet your baby brother.”

Viktor gave a long-suffering sigh. He’d been doing that a lot too, while they traveled, though Yuuri also sometimes caught the glimmer of mischief that lit up the blue lights in Viktor’s eyes whenever he _teased back,_ though with Christophe it was always done in monotone, with a perfectly straight face, and none of the half-cocked, expectant smirk that gave him heart palpitations whenever it was pointed his way instead. “Pray he’s not the last person you meet.”

Yuri was a veritable storm of fury when they dismounted at the camp, rushing to give his elder brother a hard shove before whirling on Christophe, his fist already clenched. The resulting punch, from someone smaller and more petite of build, was impressive, though surely with such anger pointed in his direction Christophe must’ve known to expect it.

Nonetheless, there he was, crumpled to the ground. Yuri’s oncoming kick he caught with a narrowing of eyes, and pulled him to the ground. “The first punch was free,” he explained, standing up to dust himself off. Otabek was nearby, suddenly, and reached down to help the young Prince back to his feet. “Save the rest.” He studied Yuri a moment with that all-seeing gaze. “We settled the war some time ago, let’s try not to fight it a second time.”

“Christophe.”

“Otabek.”

Now Yuri was incredulous, and even Viktor turned to stare at the Ranger Captain, though he left the inquisition to his brother: “You _know_ each other?”

“He’s one of the Rangers,” Christophe said, though his crooked smile was back, and even Yuuri thought it might’ve not been the whole truth: “I live in the steppes at an ancient spring that’s one of the stops for their watches. They’re from the desert. Trust me, it makes logical sense.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.”

“On what?”

“Me _ever_ trusting you,” Yuri muttered darkly, and Otabek chuckled wryly, showing one of those rare flashes of his subtle, stoic bemusement:

“That and he’s in love with one of my tribe.”

“Ah, yes.” Christophe shrugged, as though it was some tiny, inconsequential detail; his bond with one of the nomads bent on protecting the wilds. “That too.” Those greenish hazel eyes swept over Yuri for a moment, along with the curve of a knowing smile that made the younger prince flush. _All the more reason to like you, little Prince._ To make such an observation aloud in front of Viktor’s little brother would’ve been unforgivable, though, worse in Viktor’s eyes than the stunt he’d pulled in A’ve Palmera, confronted with the reality of Viktor’s fondness for Yuuri and the curious, reaching interplay of their auras. “Would’ve just _loved_ for you two to meet,” he drawled, ignoring the way Yuri stared at him, fists still clenched and at the ready. “Imagine how much _more_ fun we could’ve had. Except he and his cohort all left for the sunset road a few weeks ago. Some spectacle off in the desert, earlier than the normal pilgrimages for this time of year; I don’t suppose _you_ had anything to do with that?”

Viktor actually _rolled his eyes._ It was a gesture Yuuri had only seen in his younger brother, and he hid his smile by turning to strip the pack off of his horse. “When you start explaining yourself to the people here,” Viktor told Christophe dryly, “I want you to make sure to mention that I’ve been putting up with your terrible jokes for eleven days straight and that they’ve only gotten worse in the last hundred years.”

For only the second time, the other being Christophe’s brief moment of shock as they walked up to the oasis, Yuuri saw the Westerner hesitate, recognized a momentary flicker of dread and uncertainty in his gaze that Christophe was swift to replace. Yuuri knew those feelings all to well. The difference was: they paralyzed him, and Christophe recovered just as swiftly, actually _winked._ “Whose fault is that, I wonder?”

“Shut up.”

Yuri leaned over to Otabek, muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _is he always like this?_

“More or less.”

 

\- - -

 

 _Oh gods._ Ever since his return to Vaux Romandith Christophe had been hit with waves of fresh sentiment: wild curiosity, often, particularly from the younger generation he’d never known, who wanted to learn about their former Prince and hear of whether or not he had plans to try and resume rule. Nostalgia from the elders, people who remembered him fondly and who grafted their hopes onto him, the twist of expectation in their auras tangible and stifling as it had ever been.

This was, perhaps, his greatest secret, the one thing Viktor had never actually understood amidst all of his posturing over empathy’s potential misuses: crowds loved Christophe, but Christophe had never once loved them back.

Still there was an unavoidable nostalgia about being back here, back _home._ These trees were the giants that had been his friends; the maze of rope bridges and connected archways twisted over their enormous branches he remembered as clearly as though he’d never left. Slowly Christophe made his way up to the heart tree in the center of the village, stepped inside of the high hall. A small council stood there, talking to the young elf he’d known to look for in part because he remembered Jean-Jacques’ parents well:

_Back when they still served at our leisure._

“Out,” said Christophe, ignoring the stares pointed in his direction; tilting his head back towards the door he’d just come through. Quickly the mages scrambled to obey, and his hazel gaze fell on Jean-Jacques. “Everyone but you.”

They’d all been curious to see him. Cautiously happy, carefully hopeful. This was the burden he and Viktor had always shared, the thing that brought them together and then tore them apart: twin princes, so easy to graft dreams and wishes onto. 

In Jean-Jacques, however, there was a steady, angry streak of resentment and a bold burst of fragile bravado, the colors of which were ferocious and loud, insisting on his attention, disrupting his thoughts. Christophe turned to face the boy (Jean-Jacques was _not_ this, but he saw so much of himself in him that it was hard to think otherwise) who once would’ve been his Steward, in some other world, where different mistakes had been made. _Let’s get this over with._ “Something on your mind?” He prompted, and not for one second did Christophe feel even the slightest bit guilty about stoking the fires of Jean-Jacques’ anger.

He could see himself how insufficiently fueled it was, how quick it might be to burn all the way through.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Yeah …” Christophe hummed, then tapped his chin thoughtfully. Purposefully infuriating. “I’m going to go ahead and suggest that’s probably a lie.”

“You’re a coward,” Jean-Jacques spat, standing with his arms crossed, fists clenched into the crux of his elbows. “You come back now just because _he’s_ decided it’s okay, instead of because _we_ needed you. You left on his word, too, back when you owed it to everyone else to stay _here_.”

“Ah.” Now they were getting somewhere, Christophe thought, and he dug in a little deeper, raised his eyebrows speculatively. “Should I have fought him and died?”

“If that’s what it took.” _Youth._ Jean-Jacques could say that because he was removed from an older generation, from the Yakovs and Lilias left in the world who remembered what that meant. Christophe wasn’t sure Yakov had completely taken the lessons to heart, but Lilia, at least, understood it well.

“All that bravado, Jean-Jacques.” Christophe clicked his teeth together, and reached in his pack for the circlet Viktor had returned to him, holding it up idly as though inspecting some passing trinket, and not an artifact of the ancients. “… All that play- _pretend_ courage.” Pretend was a word that made Jean-Jacques flinch, left him grinding his teeth with a subtle, telling twitch in the muscle of his cheek.

Christophe let go of the crown, let it fall to the floor with a resounding thud.

“Pick that up,” Jean-Jacques nearly _shouted,_ unclenching his arms and crossing half the room in a series of long, swift steps. He was strong, at least, Christophe could read that much in him; there was a radiating power there if Christophe could simply get him out of his own way.

“You pick it up if it means so damn much to you,” Christophe drawled, turning his hand over to inspect his fingernails. Like he hadn’t a care in the world.

Jean-Jacques’ fury soared, precisely the _ah-ha_ moment he’d been looking for, and he sprang for the circlet with one hand and came at Christophe swinging with the other. Christophe kicked him.

“Sloppy,” he said, and then the fight was on. _You’re a boxer, are you, Jean-Jacques? Hit me with everything you’ve got._

Later, tending to his black eye and his split lip, he gave Jean-Jacques some credit: “You’ve got a better punch than I was prepared to give you credit for.” _Could’ve avoided the face, perhaps,_ Christophe thought a little gingerly, suddenly glad that the banshee who shared in half of his thoughts and all of his heart was away on the ranges. There was a certain delight he’d learned to take in the art of being _attractive_ to his lover, the fun little seductions that probably weren’t nearly as effective with an angry, swollen cheek.

“I don’t understand,” Jean-Jacques said, breath coming in heavy, rapid pulls, ribs bruised, fists shaking. In one of them the circlet was still in his grip, unreleased from the moment he’d picked it up. “I can’t do this.”

“And yet you have been doing it,” noted Christophe mildly, seemingly unoffended now that the fistfight was over, and all of Jean-Jacques brittle anger spent: “which I think is less of a mistake than you think. If anything the error is this: you took the whole weight of it on your shoulders alone, and if it’s any consolation, in a strange way, that’s at the root of the same mistake Viktor and I both made once.” _Damn._ With the split lip he couldn’t grin all the way. Viktor was going to love that. He imagined the High Prince would radiate smugness, entirely too satisfied with this trouncing. Irritating. “That’s a compliment, Jean-Jacques. Look at the company you keep.”

“So you’re not … you’re not going to stay?”

“Let’s not be hasty.” Christophe settled for a smaller smile, more elusive. “I never said _that.”_ In truth he preferred the villa and the isolation of the oasis, the quiet that let him focus on the emotions of a handful of people at a time, instead of the chaotic swirl of hundreds or thousands even. In A’ve Palmera he had room to breathe, room to think, a place to center his focus on the people he cared the most about.

In Vaux Romandith he felt as scattered already as he had been in his youth, over-eager to buy into narratives of security and alliance. Selling his heart short for the promise of safety. “Steward of A’ve Palmera has a nice ring to it,” he said, and offered a hand out to Jean-Jacques, whose blue eyes widened in surprise: “sounds like the sort of person a prince could call on if he found himself in need of help, don’t you think?”

“… a Prince?”

“ _Prince Jean-Jacques_ , I daresay.” Christophe looked pointedly at his outstretched hand. “Lesson one was fistfights. Lesson two is evidently going to be about handshakes.”

Jean-Jacques enveloped him in a bear hug and Christophe sighed, more to himself than to anything else. _Handshakes. I said handshakes._  “I have this effect on people,” he muttered, and then winced. “Watch the ribs!”

 

\- - -

 

“Viktor!” Christophe sounded entirely too cheerful for someone strolling along the overhead archways of Vaux Romandith with a face full of bruises. He clapped Jean-Jacques on the shoulder; Jean-Jacques who winced in subtle pain and who looked absolutely no better off. 

Viktor’s face was impassive and glacier-cool. _Westerners._ The Northerners trained in fighting and in the high arts, but only in the West did they settle things with duels and challenges. Yakov had once scoffed that it was the mark of impatience, an inability to wait and play the long game. Then again, Yakov had a perfect critique ready for every kingdom, knew every way in which they didn’t stand up to the golden days of old. “Yes?”

“I’ve just made Jean-Jacques Prince of the West,” Christophe announced with a lightning-quick smirk, though he winced afterwards, and poked at his fattening lip.

“I don’t think you have the authority to do that anymore,” Viktor mused idly, ignoring the way Jean-Jacques bristled as he took a moment to look contemplative. “But I suppose with the authority my father’s vested in me, we accept.”

“… I’m not the only one whose jokes have gotten worse, Vitya.”

“Get yourselves to the Halls of Medicine,” Viktor murmured, waving them off: “You both look terrible.”

 

\- - -

 

Seung-gil radiated annoyance when they returned, and hadn’t even needed to say anything to explain why. Yuuri could practically feel the question: _have you told him yet, what he’s in for?_ Yuri, too, seemed inclined to suspicion, overprotective of the brother who’d he’d only ever known at the wrong end of too many mistakes. _Don’t think that just because he likes you means I will by default._

Yuri and the rest of the Northerners were a keen reminder of the one part of Viktor’s story Yuuri wanted to forget: its references to Yakov, and his expectations for his son as the heir and the someday leader of four kingdoms of high elves. He hadn’t asked the question, even though it flickered through his thoughts along with all the rest of his doubts: _what will your father have to say about all this?_ Instead he’d endured a four day ride back from the oasis with an increasing amount of dread that Christophe must have picked up on, because he’d kept a very wide berth. Yuuri wondered how plainly the one-time Western Prince must’ve read him: how fiercely and deeply he’d come to admire and even love Viktor, and his terror and dread over a future that was going to be unavoidable by Samhain.

How much more that was going to _hurt_ , this year, now that he had such a clear picture in his mind of an alternative, of an easy, light-filled world where he woke up every morning cradled so perfectly by the efficient, cool grace that was Viktor’s body, even at rest. A broad path wound its way out of Vaux Romandith and around the lake, forming the runner’s loop for the Lughnasadh games, and Yuuri took it to clear his thoughts, because he’d chosen it before, when he’d been on the Wheel, had won the marathon to the surprise of everyone else who hadn’t known to look at him and expect endurance.

Viktor was waiting when he came back to the meadow, coming back from a day in which he’d evidently been attending to the small council at Vaux Romandith, pretending largely as though he didn’t care about any potential changes to the Westerners’ sense of order, and failing in equal measure. Every so often his words gave him away, walking with Yuuri back to the lake to rinse off: _Jean-Jacques will be made Prince. Christophe intends to tutor him._

Then, sitting back on the piece of driftwood, he asked about Yuuri’s day, offered an appreciative smile when Yuuri mentioned that he knew the running path, had circled it before, the last time he’d come to the West. “You know what I don’t understand?” Viktor asked, leaning back on his palms with an idle, contemplative look.

It was difficult to imagine _Viktor_ not understanding something. Viktor who’d been trained for his whole life to have the world at his fingers. Yuuri shook his head. “What’s that?”

“How come I never met you when you did the Wheel. When was it…?”

“Three years ago …” _This._ This was at the heart of his fears. Torn between the urge to pace and the sudden need to sit down, because the world was threatening to tilt, Yuuri chose the latter, and tried to find the right words. “I didn’t make it to Mosciren. I got … sick and broke off at Ast Petyriel.” Mostly true. _Technically_ true, even. “… My sister and Seung-gil helped me get home.”

Viktor processed this information for a beat in steady silence. Looked as though he might have wanted to ask a question. Instead he said this: “Come to Solstice with me.”

“Viktor…”

“ _With_ me,” he emphasized gently. Because it mattered. Because all this time, Yuuri’d been the halfling who happened to also be traveling on the wheel; not the fire mage Viktor had every intention of courting. _Like an equal._ He understood the quiet secrecy with which Yuuri carried himself, as though he wasn’t also the phoenix, didn’t have life itself pooling in his palms, but it was an injustice, too, to walk through the earth knowing that nobody else had seen the things Viktor saw.

That when they looked at Yuuri they saw someone average, instead of someone extraordinary.

“I understand, believe me,” Yuuri murmured, and he exhaled heavily. At A’ve Palmera, Viktor had been vulnerable: he’d told Yuuri his whole painful tale, had brought him along to witness his confrontation with Christophe, had revealed precisely why so many legends surrounded the lucky stag and why he never kept it corporeal, never let it be caught.

“Come to solstice. Come to Lughnasadh. Come to Samhain. You’ll love it, we light candles all over Mosciren and you can see the whole universe overhead, on a clear night —“

How could he stand here pretending, and not return the favor of that trust?

“Viktor,” Yuuri said softly, “you will never see me at Samhain.”

“What?”

“I …” It wasn’t going to be enough to sit here and let the words fall out. Yuuri moved and knelt in front of the prince, reached for Viktor’s hands, and looked up at him with such heartbreaking kindness that it made Viktor’s chest hurt. “I need to tell you something, and you’re not going to like it, but I need you to … I need you to …”

“Start from the beginning,” Viktor said, very quietly, and suddenly so terribly still. “Whatever it is, Yuuri. Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”

In the end he had to close his eyes to begin, to tell the story of that strange morning before Imbolc when he’d felt an irrepressible urge to go out to the canyon, to sit in the torch of the east, and the ageless magic he’d encountered there with a fire that Yuuri thought could’ve consumed anything. “ … I got back and I told Minako everything, and she’s the one who told me what my guardian was, told me to be careful. But she didn’t know … Well, we’ll get there. I set out on the Wheel with my sister and Yuuko, and everything went the way you’d expect. There was a Southerner up for Imbolc, you remember Phichit, and then we took the eagles onwards to Shen-Osheth, and stayed there through Solstice. I felt … I feel so much stronger, in the Spring and the Summer. But I didn’t think anything of it, really, decided it must’ve been an effect of the life magic Minako had told me a little bit about. We crossed the desert, accompanied by some of the Rangers, and it was dangerous, but not like what we just saw … My sister’s really good with illusions, and it helped us stay hidden.”

Nervous, now, because so far he’d only told the harmless parts of the story, the easier bits, Yuuri drew in a shaky breath. Viktor shook one of his hands free to sweep his fingers along Yuuri’s jaw, and instinctively Yuuri opened his eyes and looked up. The High Prince’s gaze was blue and patient and clear, reminded him of the sea on its calm days looking out from Hasetsuil. “… It was after Lughnasadh that I started to feel it. Under the weather. We started on the King’s Road up towards Ast Petyriel and I got this rattling cough, kept oversleeping … Still, we kept going, with the idea that I’d take a rest at Ast Petyriel and catch up to everyone else a few days later, once I started feeling better. The rest of the revelers went onwards up to Mosciren, and Mari and I stayed behind. That’s when Seung-gil showed up. We’d just decided that I’d try to ride up the pass, except I blacked out trying to get onto my horse, caught not by my sister but this stoic faced banshee I’d never seen before in my life …”

“… His familiar was this three headed dog. I’ve never felt more instinctively afraid of something in my life as I am of that thing, but he said he’d come from the Rangers, who’d told him about me, and he knew about the man I’d seen at the canyon, back before Imbolc. Mari and I went with him back to his quarters, and he told me the part of the phoenix story that Minako didn’t know, the part he says the aes sidhe all forgot…”

“Which is?”

“The first person to _ever_ have a phoenix spirit was the first halfling,” Yuuri murmured carefully, quietly: “the first child of the first elf who ever died.”

Viktor’s gaze darkened subtly, though he made a concentrated effort to control his expression: “… Go on.”

“Seung-gil had this to say. He said _the phoenix is a bird that comes out of the ashes of a death._ ” Yuuri said. “ _Every year it rises in the Spring, and every year it —“_ His breath caught, and he nearly choked on the words.

“It dies in the winter,” Viktor said, with sudden and terrible realization, and Yuuri looked on helplessly as the riddle did its work in Viktor’s eyes; as Viktor’s jaw tightened and his breath became shorter, all things Yuuri knew entirely too much about because he knew precisely how the world could turn itself upside down all of a sudden, how it could twist in on itself and leave him nowhere. “So — so you’re —“

“Viktor you _know_ what nearly happened to you in the desert,” Yuuri muttered miserably. “You know what happens when someone loses all of their magic. You will never see me on Samhain because for the past three years of my life, I’ve spent Samhain _dying.”_

“No.” Only Viktor could stare at a fact like that and tell it _no._ “ _No,"_ he repeated, still in the desperate thick of this denial: "... Not this time. Yuuri, we’ll figure it out. I’ll think of something, my _mother,_ someone —“

“Maybe you will,” Yuuri replied sadly, and a part of him desperately wanted to believe it.

“Tell me that you think that I can.”

Did he think that? _My family has attended to the phoenix for centuries,_ Seung-gil had said, cold and grave and stoic. _Among the ban side, the person who bears this responsibility is the Reaper. The last one was my mother, who knew the last phoenix was ready to let go, to pass the power onwards …_ “I think if anyone could, it would be you,” Yuuri murmured softly, and because tears had spilled over onto Viktor’s fine, high cheekbone, he suddenly realized he was crying himself. “… but I … when you say things like _come to Solstice with me,_ or when you told me the story about that part-bond you had, and how it broke, Viktor …”

“… This is why you fled at Beltane. You would have done it, otherwise.” Viktor’s eyes widened. _You were protecting me._ Yuuri hadn’t even known the half of it, then, and still he’d run: “The first step of the bond, I mean. That was as much you as it was me.”

“Oh, _gods_ , yes.”

Viktor, silent for a moment, counted his breath. “I wasn’t lying when I said I would choose you,” he said, carefully. “Over and over and over again.”

“I _know_ you weren’t.” There was no doubting Viktor when his mind was bent towards something. “… But it won’t affect just you, Vitya. There was a reason Seung-gil came with such urgency, wanted to get me home. He did, just in time to see my family, and then he made it seem like we’d left, so that there was a story for my absence… I don’t … I don’t know what happens, I never remember anything, but I was back, suddenly, a little while before Imbolc, and before I knew what hit me our whole family sprang back to life in my mind, and when I saw them again … my parents looked terrible. Mari stayed in bed for a week … Viktor, maybe you think you can withstand what happens, but will you subject Yuri to it? Maybe the Queen endures it … I only saw your mother very briefly and I hardly remember her other than my impression that she’s a little bit like you, high-minded and fine, but … can your father?” Yuuri trembled, fought back the urge to vomit. “… I’m sorry, Viktor. You are sitting there offering me the whole, perfect world, and your love, and there’s nothing on earth that I want more, and all I have to give you in return is whole handfuls of suffering and sorrow —“

“That is not true.” Yuuri looked up, and Viktor’s eyes shone bright through his tears. “ _You_ saved my life. You did it long before that day in the desert. You flew in over the horizon one morning and you made a world that I’d held at arms length for a century saturated with color again. _You_ danced with me at Beltane without a moment’s hesitation, like it was something you were born to do. _You_ made me re-examine the wisdom of a life set apart. _You_ have done all of that.” Viktor wiped his face, and drew in an unsteady, quivering breath.

“… I will speak to my family,” he said, after a moment. “I will convince them that we can handle this in the worst case, but we are going to fix it. After that, if I ask you again, _come with me to Solstice,_ will your answer be yes?”

How had he earned _this;_ Viktor’s willingness to take on and shoulder that pain?

How was he ever going to repay it?

“Yes,” Yuuri said, because he’d never wanted anything more, because the dance alone had been just an inkling of this purest form of magic, of the brightest dream he knew:

“Over and over and over again, if I have to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) on how an author can put herself into a corner: I have debated for weeks now whether or not Yuuri would keep this a secret all the way past Lughnasadh until he started getting sick, and whether or not it would be before or after he and Viktor actually started to reinstate that bond they almost had at Beltane. Ultimately I decided that it wouldn't be a good representation of the relationship he and Viktor have if he did so, because it'd be a violation of Viktor's trust and a slap in the face considering Viktor's past. 
> 
> Now I've given away the spoiler, though, and we have to wait for a long time to find out what actually happens and so I apologize in advance for the /doom/ and /dread/ of that whole ... situation. 
> 
> 2) Next chapter: we find out how Yuri takes this news about his dying-and-resurrecting potential brother-in-law. No doubt he'll be mature and rational and calm and ... 
> 
> ... 
> 
> Yeah. I'm going to quit while I'm behind on that one. Solstice, though! And Lughnasadh, hopefully. Leo and Guang Hong and Phichit and all the rest should catch back up, too. ♡


	12. you twist all possible dimensions into your own

Viktor left Yuuri by the lake; didn’t look back at the image of him twisted up in the reddish hues of sunset, almost on fire, already burning. In the end he found his brother back in the meadow, not terribly far from their pavilion, sparring with Otabek for practice. It almost made him smile. Yuri had a chip on his shoulder, a competitive streak that had flourished in part because he’d been born into the long shadow of the High Prince years after Viktor had already become a legend. Lughnasadh was known for the games that preceded the festival, and evidently the blonde intended to win.

Viktor pretended to ignored them both, and went to fetch horses instead. _Let’s go for a ride._

_Vitya?_

“Take a break,” Viktor said, and it was harder than it should have been, to keep glacial cool in his voice, to stroll aloof and unburdened. He constructed a small smile; commanded his muscles to cooperate: “come for a ride.”

“Fine.” Yuri said it curtly, as though he were irritated by the interruption, but his brother was far too transparent and there was no mistaking the subtle twitch of his lips. Besides, between the two of them, it was Yuri who made for the more graceful rider. That, too, was a sport of Lughnasadh.

_Where to?_

_You pick._

So Yuri led them, not onto the circuit, but off through the meadow and into the woods. Every so often he reached out to brush aside branches, to gently press his fingers to the huge trunks of Vaux Romandith’s first-age trees. “This forest is so old,” he murmured, and stopped for just a moment to enjoy it; the green, summer scent that clung in the air; the last chirps of birds who were nesting for twilight.

“Mm,” Viktor agreed, and broke off from a study of his brother to glance around the trees. Yuri’s behavior, looking on this place he’d once seen with much more frequency with newer, younger eyes, swept him into a wave of nostalgia. Coming into adolescence, Yuri had done much to bury the younger version of himself, who’d looked on the world with such innocence and wonder. Viktor caught himself missing that child, but the child was gone, now: the elf before him was grown. “Older than our father is,” he added idly. “Mother might know the original name.”

Lilia, who seemed to know _everything_ , who kept what was left of their lore in the great library of scrolls at Ast Petyriel. Somewhere in those halls of ancient magic there had to be a solution for what loomed at the start of winter for Yuuri; the aes sidhe would never have accepted such an outcome, not with all the magic of the world in their hands.

“Viktor.” Yuri’s green eyes flashed back his direction, sharp, and Viktor knew he’d been silent for too long: “What did you bring me out here to tell me?”

Did he have the words, precisely? Viktor could imagine constructing a sparse outline of only the relevant facts for his father: _yes, he’s a halfling; a halfling who also happens to carry the phoenix …_

Yuri, though; Yuri deserved details, and he didn’t trust himself to speak. Viktor carefully nudged his horse forward, and then he reached for the side of Yuri’s face, pressed their foreheads together, closed his eyes and drifted into the family link.

The story came in images: of that morning outside Hasetsuil, seeing such wonderful and startling magic that he’d rode on ahead to discover the cause. The way Yuuri had politely side-stepped answers, and brought them into the capital of the East, where even Minako had refused to give him more details, saying only: _he’s my best student._ How he’d wanted to push and prod more, aboard the Ardor, but even on deck, Yuuri had largely resisted discovery. Until the night of the storm. Viktor’s thoughts lingered there, on how he’d felt turning to go back below deck only to discover the halfling standing there, drenched and transfixed and on the brink of making himself ill. It had been so instinctive then, to sweep him close and wring out all the water from his robes; to pull him into the Captain’s quarters for rest. That morning he woke up calm and clearheaded, refreshed from a deep and easy sleep. Next to him, Yuuri had been a curled up bundle of warmth and heat, his head tucked against Viktor’s shoulder, face soft and at peace in sleep. It had been easier than it should’ve been to pick the halfling up, and carry him cradled back to the Southrons asleep in their bunks.

Yuri shifted in his saddle and beneath him the horse flicked its tail, too; sensing, perhaps, its masters impatience, the way the blonde so often came through the world like he was still wielding his sword: _cut to the chase._ “I get it, you like him, what’s —“

 _I’ll get there._ The memories rolled steadily forwards, beyond Shen-Osheth, and the pleasant surprise of the friendship the Ji Court bore for the fire mage, an idle observation Viktor had made largely by watching the interactions between Phichit and Yuuri. Then came Beltane.

Even Viktor knew he didn’t want to replay that memory to its fullness; to the way he’d wandered away from the festival in search of that same pre-dawn brightness and not been in any way disappointed. He told the story instead. “I followed him away from the festival at Beltane,” he said then. “… The way he dances, Yura, the …”

“Now you sound like mother.”

“There are worse things to sound like. Minako’s been teaching him all the high arts …” _Beautiful._ Yuuri, in his element like that, surrounded by ribbons of heat and life and flame; Yuuri was riveting. Thinking about it now, Viktor realized that if he could spend the rest of his time watching the way Yuuri moved when he wasn’t conscious of anyone watching, those years would be well-spent; those days would feel golden.

“I thought something strange happened, that night, you felt so …”

“So what?”

“… Happy,” Yuri admitted, though not without the edge of a grumble. _Because then I found you after dawn and you’d been crying, Vitya._

“I lost track of myself, for a while,” Viktor admitted quietly, glancing askance up at the trees. After Christophe, he’d made for himself a series of rules. Rules like keeping the stag incorporeal, and therefore hard to catch; like subtly enforcing the protocols of his rank at all times. Dancing with Yuuri had been as natural as breathing and perhaps he could have kept leaning on the excuse of having gotten so entranced by the ease and the grace of it, but there’d been more to it than that.

It had been the freedom to act without those boundaries.

The absolute, instinctive certainty that Yuuri was _safe._

Strange, thinking about it now. No one would have ever suspected that _he’d_ needed that sense of security. “… And nearly started a bond, unconsciously.” Pause. “… Somewhat unconsciously.” There was no unconscious choosing of a bond, after all; it was never an accident, this gift exchanged between two people. “He stopped me and left. As for the state you saw me in …” Viktor shrugged. “It was a lot to take in,” he admitted. “After watching our parents, and then what happened with Christophe, I’d convinced myself it’d be better to avoid something like that entirely, but this …” The sentence trailed off and Viktor let himself back into his own thoughts; tried to sort them out. _It split me open._

“The next day Guang Hong made me listen to one of the Westerners complain about the infestation on the Sunset Road and I decided we’d leave immediately. Distance would let me decide what to do about what I’d stumbled on, and I was confident we could handle it. Overconfident.” It had been too many years since Viktor had taken the pilgrimage of the Wheel; the world he remembered had been safer, easier. Of course, those memories were all glossed over by a spell that had made Christophe the sole focus of his thoughts, and he hadn’t examined them with any great frequency afterwards, too avoidant of grief, too unwilling to re-expose himself to suffering.

Yuri crossed his arms. “So you have a bond with a halfling now and that’s how he healed you up in the desert. Father’s going to be furious.”

“No,” Viktor said, and for a moment his expression was pained. “I … I …”

“Then how on earth did he manage to heal you?”

“His familiar is a phoenix.”

Yuri stared at Viktor as though he’d provided the answer to some other question, not the one he’d asked, and then realization came a moment afterwards, part of the old fables that Lilia told of a prettier and more romantic world than the one Yakov insisted they were living in now. “Healing magic,” he murmured. _Healing and fire. Of course. He’s like you._

“Life and fire,” Viktor echoed softly.

“What’s the catch?”

Viktor sighed, and turned back in his thoughts to the conversation he’d just had:

_Every year it rises in the spring and —_

_it dies in the winter._

Yuri stared at Viktor for a mere fraction of a second, but there was no mistaking the flicker of conflict or the hardening of his eyes. Without a word his brother turned and spurred the horse back towards Vaux Romandith, taking the shortest, fastest route back through the trees.

 _Yura, wait._ There’d be no catching him; nobody in the North was a better rider. Yuri was the swift Northern wind, had perfect instincts for the saddle. Viktor sighed and began to cut back on his own, though he’d almost certainly be left behind.

_I cannot believe you are honestly considering putting our mother through_ **_that_ ** _every winter, Vitya._

_Why do you think I came to talk to you?_

 

\- - -

 

Yuri dismounted, threw off his reins to the person who happened to be nearest (Georgi, he’d recognize later), ignored Mila’s greeting, and stormed into the first of their pavilion tents in search of the halfling, ignorant of the two banshees who rose like shadows to follow him indoors.

“You.” Never had he made a single syllable so accusatory, and it was now that Yuri demonstrated the swift speed with which he could move when motivated: in this case to rush forward and grab the halfling by his collar, and then give him a furious, bone-rattling shake. The disadvantage of the damn tent was its lack of solid walls; in Mosciren there would’ve been something stone to shove Yuuri into, and Ast Petyriel had big, wooden halls.

Otabek and Seung-gil circled to opposite sides of the room, the dog’s ears pinned to its head with an angry flick of too-long tail. Seung-gil looked rather pointedly at Otabek, brow raised as if to say: _will you be handling this, or shall I?_

_Patience, cousin._

There was no satisfaction in yelling at Yuuri, however; his eyes went wide and then his body went limp, offering no resistance to Yuri’s anger. “Do you know what it’s going to _do_ to him when you _die?_ ” _He went through a fraction of this once and look what it did …_

Yuuri shut his eyes. With Seung-gil’s familiar so close and Yuri’s sharp reminders of what was coming the death rattle felt near, even if there were still long months of summer to enjoy before harvest. “Look at me!” The blonde snapped, giving Yuuri one of his vicious shoves. Behind him, the dog growled, and Otabek stepped into place, putting a hand on his shoulder. It brought into focus the steady and subtle pulse of Beka’s heartbeat, smooth and even and solid, and at the reminder of _that,_ Yuri tensed up:

“You’re going to make him _miserable,_ ” he spat.

“Yuri.” Viktor’s voice in the doorway; Mila behind him. “That’s enough.”

“Shut up, Vitya. You. _You.”_ He looked at Yuuri with a cold, glittering glare. “You expect me to believe that you think you can come back every year and fix what you broke?”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Then you can’t have him.”

 _“Yura.”_ Viktor’s voice now, more insistent, but it was Yuuri who lifted a hand, tired but resolute.

“You misunderstood me,” he said, quietly. “Coming back every year is what I do, now. I didn’t ask for it and I still don’t want it but it’s become inevitable.”

“You’re talking about shattering a soulbond every Samhain, you’re both crazy —“

“Maybe,” Yuuri agreed wearily. The breaking would come. Inevitably. It was the forming that he’d turned his thoughts too; the effortless way his magic and Viktor’s had come together, amidst the fire of Beltane. “But don’t ask me to fix your brother. Viktor is not _broken_. He never has been.”

Yuri was silent for a moment, looking back and forth between his brother in the doorway and the halfling he wouldn’t have minded pushing off of the high edge of one of Mosciren’s cliffs.

Except could the phoenix ever be killed?

 _Yura, I’m not miserable,_ Viktor’s argentine voice, drifting through the back of his thoughts, between the beating of Otabek’s heart. _I’m going to stop it. I will find a way._

_What if you can’t?_

_Then I will make due with the joy I can derive while it lasts._ “I have spent a hundred years decided on the idea that it would be very convenient not to love anyone at all, in this fashion,” Viktor murmured aloud. _Besides my family and a very close circle of friends, I determined nobody would ever be worthy._ “Better a few months of Spring than an entire year of Winter, Yura.”

_Yeah, but why did you have to pick_ **_him?_ **

_Did you choose Otabek?_

“It’s not the same,” Yuri snapped suddenly, with a hard glare, and then he cut Viktor out of his thoughts, and turned back to Yuuri:

“You’re going to choose him every year?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because so help me, if you don’t, I will awaken all the ancient gods and rain such suffering down on your head that Samhain will be the least of your worries.” Yuri brushed Otabek’s hand off of his shoulder and stormed out the door, pushing past his brother to do it.

“Well,” Mila chirped, from where she’d been standing quietly by the entire time: “I have no idea what just happened but that seems to have _gone well.”_

“Leash your dog,” Otabek murmured coolly to Seung-gil, who raised a brow in return:

“And you your feral fey.” For once the answering flicker of Otabek’s temper shone through; the darkening room, the burst of shadow. It shone as a clear warning; perhaps the first time he’d placed Yuri’s feelings over loyalty to clan and kin. Seung-gil’s look became more pointed in return, and then both Otabek and the three-headed dog were gone: the former back out through the pavilion’s front flaps, passing by Viktor with a subtle nod, the latter dispersed into darkness and smoke.

Somehow Viktor’s first concern was for Yuuri, which felt, to the halfling, undeserved and unearned. “… Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“He shouldn’t have threatened you.”

“I’m fine,” Yuuri repeated, though he felt scrutinized and emptied, somehow, as though Yuri had swept into the room, rattled his very bones, shaken out whatever strength it was that held him up. He was homesick, suddenly. His parents, both sweet and kind-natured, would never have attacked Viktor in such a fashion. His mother had a different way of getting the information she wanted: over dinner and mead, breaking bread together, nearly everyone opened up. It was Mari he thought of suddenly, Mari who would’ve asked a few pointed, blunt questions, and then probably gone outside with herbs and a pipe to smoke and think and clear her head. Nonetheless, the protective sentiment remained, expressed differently, without Yuri’s tendency to cut through the world as though all of it were paper and he was the wielder of the only knife. “He did it because he loves you,” he added, belatedly, tiredly. “That’s not so bad a thing.”

In the end, Viktor decided to go to bed, to find his brother in the morning, when cooler heads could prevail. He still drew Yuuri with him, fell asleep contemplating the handful of sleeping shirt Yuuri had curled into his fist as he slept. The halfling’s grip on the fabric was fierce; another one of those little habits where Yuuri’s body belied his promises.

 _This is mine,_ said those possessive fingers; _I won’t let go._

 

\- - -

 

Ultimately Otabek found Yuri by the shore of the lake, and hesitated for a moment at the clearing of the trees simply to allow himself the pleasure of _looking_. A waxing moon gathered strength overhead; the sky was clear, the constellations twinkled down, and a short distance away the lantern lights of Vaux Romandith glittered up in the trees. Yuri had summoned the unicorn spirit, and stood beneath the graceful arch of its neck, combing through its mane, which, incandescent and incorporeal, made for wisps of light that pooled over his fingers.

Otabek was not particularly prone to either sentiment or praise but this, he could concede, was beautiful. Nevertheless, Yuri’s heartbeat still churned loud and angry in his ears, and so he strode out under the moonlight, steps too obvious to be mistaken, and dropped his pack, picked up by habit, as he walked closer.

“Don’t touch me,” Yuri warned him, as he came closer. “I don’t need to be calmed down.” _I don’t need to be managed or told what to do._ What he needed was the space to be angry; angry that Viktor, who was supposed to be infallible, had willingly plunged himself — and by extension the rest of their family — into this situation to begin with. Otabek said nothing, which was irritating in and of itself because it was precisely what he’d asked for and yet not quite what he’d _wanted._ “… Do you know he mentioned you when he told me about it?”

“I do now.”

“Like it’s the same. Like what you did out in the desert wasn’t to help save _his_ life, and —”

“Ah.” Otabek’s subtle smile was back, and Yuri didn’t trust the reflective gleam in his gaze, tried to tune out the infuriating steadiness of his pulse. “You are under the impression that we are where we are at present, only because it would save your brother?”

“Well …”

“Viktor’s survival may someday be useful to me,” Otabek murmured calmly. “But I think you’re being a bit dishonest with yourself if you think that’s _why_ I helped him.”

“You’re saying you did it for me.”

“Do you think that’s a lie?” How like mysterious, enigmatic Otabek to not answer directly. To so regularly refuse to put form and a name to a thing.

“No. Yes. … Maybe.” Yuri’s eyes narrowed and he looked back at the unicorn, swept his fingers along the noble lines of its head, smiled subtly and regretfully when it flicked its tail and stamped its feet. “If this is what love is like, I don’t want it,” he said. “My parents are all … severe passion, and look at my brother, ready to martyr himself, they’re all so ridiculous and _so_ …”

“I seem to have missed some of the more pertinent details,” Otabek admitted, choosing not, for the moment, to address the defensive rejection in Yuri’s words. _I don’t want it._ “The halfling’s magic … he’ll die and resurrect? Every Samhain.”

“Like the phoenix,” Yuri muttered and Otabek inclined his head. It certainly explained the presence of Seung-gil, walking through the world with that deathly dog obedient at his heels.

 _So he’s the Reaper now._ “I see.”

“Did you hear me? I don’t _want_ it.”

“I’ve heard you perfectly.”

“Good.” Yuri fumed. “Good, that’s good, that’s _perfect_ really —“ Except Otabek was still standing there, looking at him with a curious mien, some combination of bemusement and impatience that he didn’t understand. “Why aren’t you going?”

“I’m waiting for you to be done telling me what you think.” Otabek smiled and it was dangerous, that smile. “Are you finished?”

Yuri stared at him in irritable silence.

“What I heard you say, Yuri,” Otabek murmured, and he took a step closer now, trapping the blonde between his body and the bright sheen of the familiar, “was that you don’t want _that._ The tempest of Yakov and Lilia, as though either of them weren’t already severe people, drawn to extremes at both ends: Yakov with his warrior games and Lilia, the sorceress. And you don’t want to be like your brother, who hasn’t lost anything in well over a century, or, if you consider anything he’d actually regret losing, hasn’t truly lost anything ever and now has no choice but to lose and lose again: a man who thought if he could just control love the way he could control all the other odds perhaps he’d make it through life on top. You know him better than anyone; how happy do you think he’s been with that approach? A mage who loves water and ice falls in love with a mage who burns. Fortune and life. Hand in hand.” Otabek did not often have this much to say; not since he’d helped Yuri re-summon the unicorn had he expressed himself so decisively. “Your parents and your brother aren’t victims of some cruel, vindictive, frivolous force, Yuri, made miserable by something that swept over them without their knowing or joyous consent. Their choices conform to who and what they are. What about any of _this,_ so far …” A flicker of irritation shone through, now, and Otabek clarified firmly: “about yourself, about _me,_ makes you think your experience would possibly be analogous to either of those?”

 _I am not your brother. I am not your father._ Otabek knew himself perfectly and clearly. Saw Yuri with the same deep, ancient insight. _I am darker and deeper, and you are lighter and fairer, and we are both of us better men than either of them._

Yuri stared up at him, mouth slightly ajar, and then he banished the familiar behind him, bought himself room to take a slight step backwards. Exposed, like this, to the unyielding force of the banshee’s beliefs made him hungry for either more air or less, and the former, space, distance, seemed the safer of the two options by far.

“It won’t stay like _this,_ though. Comfortable. Easy. You’ll be in my head, I’ll be —“

“Is it _me_ you’re afraid of, or _anyone?”_

“I didn’t say I was afraid.”

Otabek looked at him with an answering, subtle smirk. _Didn’t you?_

“Fine,” Yuri snapped, fixing him with a glare that only deepened one corner of Otabek’s quiet smile. “Fine. We’ll lay around stargazing, we’ll never kiss, we’ll —“

“Would you like me to kiss you?” Otabek’s answering grin and the predatory gleam in his eyes made Yuri think back to the desert, when he’d flown the wyvern, scouted, every bit one of the Rangers still: fixed on his quarry. This time, as he stepped forward, Yuri did not step back, though tell-tale heat raced across the bridge of his nose and his high, delicate cheekbones as Otabek’s reached for him: this time no steady, calming hand on a shoulder; this was a careful sweep of fingers against his hipbone, too deliberate to be mistaken. “That could be arranged.”

“You’re an idiot,” muttered Yuri, but still, he was Yuri’s idiot; Beka, the nomad, the hunter of his heart. He leaned up on the balls of his feet, kissed the banshee at the corner of his smirk. _You say we’re going to be different. Show me._

Otabek turned his head into the kiss, grinned briefly against the Prince’s mouth.

He’d always been up for a challenge.

_I will._

 

\- - -

 

_Six weeks after Beltane (two weeks to Summer Solstice), 1017 II Age_

There was a momentary, awkward silence as Viktor walked into the council hall of Vaux Romandith, looking back and forth between Christophe and Jean-Jacques, who each looked better than the day before but still nursed bruises. Jean-Jacques still seemed inclined to wait for Christophe to speak; Christophe, perfectly aware of this, had let the silence stretch on without doing a single thing about it.

“… Prince Viktor.” Jean-Jacques finally said, as he realized that the _Steward_ was pointedly honoring protocol, letting his leader speak first. It still felt foreign, that concept; he’d spoken about it with Isabella for hours and been somewhat validated by her faith in him, and nonetheless, here amongst two legends, it was difficult to be certain he’d fit. _Perhaps the fact that you’re uncomfortable wearing the mantle is the best indicator of all that you ought to bear it,_ Christophe had said, waving a hand as though this consideration was a trifle.

Viktor’s blue eyes showed a momentary amusement, all-too-brief. “Prince Jean-Jacques.” His general mien was serious, and Christophe studied it with some interest, python draped around his shoulders. Never before had he seen such a strange mix of contentment and dread. “… I need to use your wayseeing stone.”

“It’s in the chapel,” Jean-Jacques murmured. “I’ll show you the way.”

Later, much later, Viktor emerged and Christophe took in the shifting chaos of his aura once again: steely determination, and care, and something like anticipation.

“Stop that.” Even after a hundred years, Viktor was far too attuned to his habits. Christophe flashed a brief, apologetic smile.

“Can’t help it.”

 _“Pretend.”_ Viktor’s gaze dismissed him then, and he turned back to Jean-Jacques. “My father is summoning you for Samhain,” he said, glancing only briefly back to Christophe. “Both of you.”

“I can’t leave here, it’s too dangerous…”

“I know. Which is why I also called Guang Hong. Lughnasadh is his last stop on the Wheel. He’s agreed to stay over with some of his court. They’ll see that your borders stay safe.”

“I see… Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

“I’ll walk you down,” Christophe murmured, though Viktor needed no guide through this place, and probably didn’t welcome his company. “Did you tell him?”

“About what?”

Christophe sighed. It was too much to expect, clearly, to completely fall back into the habits of their youth, no matter how certain he was that Viktor had understood him perfectly. He supposed he should’ve been worried about this impending meeting with Yakov, the man who’d once encouraged and nourished all of Viktor’s hurt and his fury. Thinking about it now, he felt curiously empty, at ease. What he wanted to know about was this fledgling love of Viktor’s, the Halfling he gravitated towards.

It had been such a pleasant surprise, to read that so clearly in Viktor’s aura. To see it, even now. “His sons,” Christophe murmured absently, “and their wayward hearts.”

“I told him about Yuuri,” Viktor replied, and his temper soared, indication enough that there’d been an argument. To say that Yakov was displeased was an understatement; Viktor had heard and listened to his outrage, had, for the first time in his life, pushed back: _I am sick and tired of hearing about my obligations to a people who nearly destroyed the balance of the earth._

But for the graces of Lilia, who’d promised to search the libraries, and had even indicated she’d travel up to Mosciren for Samhain itself, where no doubt her influence would contain the warrior king, he might’ve gone further. _This is what I’m choosing. You can choose to live with it or you can choose to never speak to me again._

“… Given everything else, _halfling_ is presently the least of my father’s concerns.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> three announcements:
> 
> a) i think we are done with dense day-specific chapters. which maybe hasn't bothered any of you but irritates me. the next one is for sure solstice and the one after that is for sure lughnasadh. 
> 
> then things will slow down a bit again into samhain. current outline has me up to like, 17 chapters, which probably means more like 18-20 if this keeps happening. guhhhh.
> 
> b) after feedback from a reader, i have gone back and stripped this story and its notes of the word 'totem.' after some reflection i agree that its usage can be seen as hurtful or appropriating, and i don't ever want something to make someone feel inhibited from engaging with my work, so you'll now see the words familiar, guardian, spirit used somewhat interchangeably; i've tried to do it in a way that aligns to the character's perspectives; e.g. the high elves are more inclined to use 'familiar' and the ban side are more inclined to call them spirits or guardians. but it's a little bit flexible. more on that worldview will emerge in the final few chapters. 
> 
> c) listen you guys Piyo13 has now done two incredible pieces of art for this universe, too, which if you're an author i think is always /mega feels./ seriously i can't stop staring. they are: 
> 
> http://piyo13sdoodles.tumblr.com/post/157685481206/the-erstwhile-prince-of-west-so-theres-this-like  
> http://piyo13sdoodles.tumblr.com/post/157716290031/i-would-like-to-kiss-you-yuuri-katsuki-he
> 
> particularly in the second instance because i've been working on a drawing of viktor from this world for a long time and i'm hung up on the coloring and ughhhh this is beautiful and they look how they look and it's /glorious/ you guys simply glorious (also her stories are really good too ♡!)


	13. a mouth that says O again and again

 

Viktor returned from his hours in the chapel strangely subdued, reluctant to reveal too much about the conversations he’d held with the Wayseeing stone. _I don’t want to talk,_ he admitted, tired of bickering, of Yakov’s posturing and Lilia’s drama and even tired of Yuri’s protective fury. _Can we just not talk?_

This, too, was a clue: how companionable silence could be; the way Yuuri’s shoulder was strong enough to lean on, even if the brush of his fingers, undoing Viktor’s braid, was soft. Later he made little animals of flame dance on his fingertips; a child’s trick, like shadow puppets for children, inverted. It reminded Viktor of a time when the world had seemed simpler, proved enough to draw out his smile. That alone was its own kind of gratitude; he kissed the tips of those fingers, the ones that troubled his thoughts like a goldfish in a pond: a dance of bright orange, stirring up the waves, and yet:

What purpose had the pond even served, before the fish had been there?

 

\- - -

_Six weeks and two days after Beltane (one week and five days to Summer Solstice), 1017 II Age_

In the end it was Yuri who settled the matter, unwittingly, perhaps, after two days of detente. He’d perched on a bench outside the pavilion, slicing a sour green apple into quarters, and whether he offered a piece to Viktor out of habit or to make peace would’ve been truly impossible to say.

“You might as well tell him what we all said,” Yuri muttered, “instead of sitting around in a sulk.” Viktor glanced back, and bit into the apple instead of the urge to send out a caustic remark; to fire barbed words instead of flawless arrows. _Yura,_ after all, knew a thing or two about sulking. Nonetheless some of the sentiment must’ve bled over; either that or his brother read his gaze. “You keep this up like you’re all determined to do and he’ll know eventually anyway.”

He hadn’t said it, but the reminder was there: _you’ll make him into one of us, so of course he’ll know._

After that he’d wanted to do it _right;_ realized he had no idea whatsoever about what _right_ was, no patience or interest in figuring it out. What he knew was that on the Western edge of the forest there were fields, and in those fields grew flowers, and they’d be harvested in time for the parades of Lughnasadh but they’d perhaps be starting to bud now.

He took Yuuri there because they weren’t in Mosciren and they weren’t in Hasetsuil. Because the markets of Shen-Osheth, with all their wonders, would’ve made for better gifts.

There were sunflowers, though, and those seemed appropriate, though they made it hard to remember his words or really, even, his purpose in making the whole excursion in the first place.

Not when Yuuri kept bending over to brush petals, to _smell,_ to stand there wrapped up in sunlight healthy and hale and so, _so_ golden. So beautiful it made his heart hurt, something Lilia talked about, sometimes, and which Viktor had never really understood until just now.

“Yuuri,” Viktor murmured: “Will you come to solstice with me?”

 

\- - -

 

_Litha (Summer Solstice), 1017 II Age_

For the first and only time, Yuuri regretted leaving most of his possessions back in Shen-Osheth. He’d been in travelers’ clothes for weeks, comfortable and easy to wash and sparse, and though he’d probably looked ridiculous riding with the Northern Court, in all their traditional finery, it’d been an explainable difference.

Particularly after an emergency.

This, though, was _Litha,_ a festival, and he’d be going _with_ Viktor, who’d probably look every bit as regal as he had at Beltane. There was nothing to be done about it; even back in Hasetsuil he’d have looked a pauper by compare. _Viktor doesn’t care,_ he reminded himself, _so neither should you._ Except he knew the way people would talk. Was it wrong to want to be an asset, instead of a piece of baggage to carry around for centuries to come?

Mila popped in, bright and early, more comfortable announcing herself outside of the room he was sharing with Viktor now that some new kind of norm had been established. She was likable, quick, had none of the reticence of her peers: “There’s a summons for you from Jean-Jacques,” she explained, and Viktor rose to attend to it. “Not you, Vitya. _Him_. It’s for Yuuri.”

Viktor blinked, and then his eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and then he’d shrugged and smirked a little bit on some score Yuuri couldn’t keep. _Christophe._ “Enjoy that,” quipped Viktor idly, and then he rolled back over, pretending as though he’d really go back to sleep.

It was Christophe who was waiting at the small council, python familiar curled around his arm, hands tucked idly behind his back. “… Jean-Jacques was looking for me?” Yuuri inquired, carefully, and he wasn’t sure he should like the answering grin he received, all crooked mischief, too broad and too bright to be trusted.

“Jean-Jacques is taking the morning off to spend some time with his lover,” Christophe hummed. “Besides, our lesson series has not yet gotten to fashion.” He clicked his tongue together. “The poor boy needs my help. But not so badly as you, I think. Out of the three shirts I’ve noticed you currently own, which shade of travel-worn beige were you actually planning on wearing while you accompany our future King to the festivities?”

Yuuri’s mouth opened and shut again, and then his eyes narrowed, a little bit stubbornly. “The beige that got washed yesterday,” he muttered back. _Good,_  Christophe thought. The halfling had a spine in there somewhere, evidently; he was going to need it, if he intended to spend the rest of his days with Vitya.

 _Enjoy that,_ Viktor had said, and Yuuri realized that the High Prince had known exactly what he was in for. Christophe, on the other hand, was in his element, positively _delighted,_ even. “Won’t do at all,” he chided, and shook his head. “Pity we’re not in Shen-Osheth. So many options. You know, everyone’ll be expecting red with you, that’s what everyone says with fire mages, but I think we can do something a little different, don’t you?”

“… do I have any say in this whatsoever?”

“Not particularly. It just makes me feel more polite when I ask.”

 

\- - -

 

Christophe settled on clothes he wound up borrowing from an all-too-willing Emil: an embroidered tunic with a very faint motif of leaves stitched in pale, amber-colored thread; a navy waistcoat and matching cloak. “Why bother him for all the layers? It’s so hot, nobody’s going to stay in formal attire …” Yuuri, who always seemed to be a few degrees warmer than everyone else he knew, was quick to shrug out of the cloak, though he gently folded it over a nearby chair, too polite to cast off something which hadn’t been his in the first place.

“… Blue is one of his colors, you know,” Christophe murmured. “Not navy, like this, but it’s a nice reference for those of us who still love a little subtlety —“ Nonetheless, he didn’t sound entirely satisfied with his work, and before Yuuri could remark on how strange it was to have Christophe dressing him for the occasion, the empath had given him a sharp look. “I’m not dressing you like me,” he said firmly, and that, at least, Yuuri could believe. Then he’d insisted Yuuri would need a crown of flowers; this was the West, after all, and that Isabella — Jean-Jacques’ consort — made some of the best of them.

He had sunflowers and wheat and sprigs of sage in his hair, now, and he felt more than a little ridiculous walking back across the meadow to the pavilion where the Northerners waited. Crossing the grass, Yuuri’s breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t been wrong to expect Viktor in his silver cloak, in his fine robes; had known well enough what that would look like. It was the shafts of filtered sunlight coming down through the trees, perhaps, some illusion or trick of the light, the blue roses in his hair and the baby’s breath delicately twined through the silver circlet that made up his crown.

It was his smile, slow at first, and then broad; the heart-shaped perfection of his mouth, the endless cerulean brightness of his eyes.

Viktor’s kiss was like that smile, too; soft at first, before it bloomed.

“You clean up well.”

“About that.” Yuuri’s eyes narrowed subtly, but in good humor, because in the radiance of Viktor’s smile it was impossible not to smile back: “Don’t ever put me through that again.”

“Mm.” Viktor’s _laugh_ , intoxicating. “I’ll consider it.”

 

\- - -

 

Litha, too, was a festival of fire. The Westerners prepared a whole feast; roasting vegetables on open spits of flame, burning sage and incense in balefires carefully arranged near the lake, where none of the woods proper would catch a dangerous spark. They brewed a heady summer ale and they encouraged drinking of far too much of it, contests that left Jean-Jacques and Christophe well and properly drunk together at the encouragement of the rest of their court. Together they all gathered on the a far point of the southern shore, looking across the narrowest part of the lake to a hill on the northern side, where several mages had rowed over to complete one of the evening rituals: rolling a burning cask down the hill and into the lake, a real and physical representation of the waning strength of the sun.

Yuuri looked away, the way he always did this time of year, and Viktor’s fingers found his, twined them back together, squeezed. It was Viktor, too, who brought them back to the bonfires, who completed one leap through the flames but no more, though he watched and cheered when Yuuri did, delighted.

Viktor who pulled him close for the dances, silver fortune twisting on his fingertips.

Neither one of them saw the way Yuri’s eyes followed them around each sweeping circle, studious, attentive. “… He smiles more,” he told Otabek, finally, from where they sat, roasting pieces of fruit on long sticks in front of one of the fires.

“And?”

“It’s okay. It’s good to see him laugh.”

Otabek slipped an arm around Yuri’s waist, rested his chin on his shoulder. Leaning back against the banshee’s chest was comfortable and easy and effortless, and it made the blonde smile sometimes, to reflect on Otabek, a mage of shadows, strong at his back like Yuri’s shadow itself.

He was learning, too: how to detect the subtle mischief of Otabek’s voice, the slivers of contentment and play in its cadence: “I was asking,” murmured Otabek, whose smile deepened as Yuri’s fingers traced wispy patterns on his arm, echoes of the rising smoke, “about you.”

_I smile more, too._

 

\- - -

Fire, as it always did, proved a temptation too strong to resist, and Viktor must’ve sensed Yuuri’s impatience, or, at least, the subtle irritation of restraining himself in front of a crowd. “Dance with me again,” he’d whispered, and together they’d snuck away, back to the meadow and the two empty pavilions, away from the revelers who’d remain on the southern point for hours to come. Both cloaks lay folded over benches; Yuuri added the waistcoat to the pile, rolled up his sleeves.

Now Viktor stood opposite of him, with that thoughtful, piercing look that left Yuuri feeling exposed. At first that gaze had been unpleasant; too all-seeing, entirely too capable of ripping out his secrets. Now he had no secrets left. There was a strange, thrilling freedom in that. “What are you waiting for?”

Viktor held out one hand, and around his fingers curled the silvery threads of fortune, the whites and blues of ice and sea. “… If we do this, we’re going to finish it.”

_The dance at Beltane._

What was it about Viktor that made it so easy to expand on his boundaries? After the first Samhain with the phoenix, Yuuri had sworn off the idea of bringing someone with him into the spirit’s cycles of death and resurrection, and then Viktor had come to him at Beltane, had moved as though he knew precisely where Yuuri was going to be, had incredible magic that reached for his. Viktor who stood looking at him now with eyes that haunted Yuuri’s dreams, with a subtle, patient smile.

Viktor whose heartbeat he remembered being so solid, so steady. Yuuri took his hand, an answering gold pooling in his palm, and then the world began to turn again on the perfect circles of their steps, and the dance of the phoenix, the dart and chase of the stag, the sheer ribbons of vermillion and azure, of silver and gold.

This time when he heard it, steady and lulling as a distant drumbeat, Yuuri didn’t run away.

“… You have such a fast heartbeat,” Viktor whispered, as he caught Yuuri by the waist, drew him closer as the magic knots around their entwined fingers circled more tightly, and sank into skin. The intentionality of it this time, struck him suddenly. There was a greater intimacy in this; this _choosing,_ not because of the strange, irresistible chemistry of their magic or the ease of their bodies, but because of the knowing that had come out of their two tales, unveiled now.

_Like a hummingbird._

At Beltane there had still been hidden mysteries, the worst they both had to offer, the parts they’d both admitted to keeping hidden at Shen-Osheth.

It had not been a lie, Beltane, but this was truer-truth.

Yuuri wasn’t sure who initiated the kiss this time, but it was fierce and firm and deep, not a siren song or a pyre, though he lost himself to it all the same. This was a benediction; this was a blessing. This was creation-song and good luck and red, red apples and _life._

Viktor learned something else about that answering heartbeat, once he’d gotten Yuuri inside, and out of the tunic, dropping kisses down the line of the halfling’s throat and then onto the bared plane of his chest.

Yuuri’s skin felt electric under his touch; his chest twisted, tightened, not painfully, but:

_Thump-thump. Thumpthump. Thumpthumpthumpthump._

Viktor let his fingers trail over the sensitive skin of abdomen, tug on the waistband of pants, trace hipbones. “Oh,” the Prince all but purred, grinning in the dark at Yuuri’s tell-tale, quickening heartbeat as his _lover_ flushed, a blush that started over the bridge of his nose and spread, and which Viktor had every shameless intention to encourage.

There were places he’d been thinking about kissing for _weeks,_ and if all of them did this, had Yuuri’s pulse quickening in the back of his thoughts, such a clear, physical reaction to a stimuli he was more than willing to provide, then … “Oh, Yuuri,” he hummed, delighted, and he knelt, which was simultaneously the strangest, most obscene, most magical, and most beautiful thing Yuuri had ever seen: the High Elf Prince on his knees, playing the worst kinds of tricks on his butterfly heart:

“… This is going to be _entirely_ too much fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone has earned two chapters of collective fluff. this is one of them. ♡


	14. blood and bread, flowers and prayer

 

_The day after Litha (Summer Solstice), 1017 II Age_

He woke to the rise and fall of Viktor’s chest, steady and predictable as waves, an early curling that always preceded the subtle beat of his heart, the way lightning always came before thunder, but gentler, soft-handed as the mists of spring. Yuuri, always an early riser, studied Viktor in silence: the wild splash of silver hair on the pillow, the shadow left by long-lashes on the noble line of his cheeks.

It struck him from nowhere, the errant thought: _I could do this forever._

Every place he looked was a new memory; the shoulders his fingers had curled around, and left temporary, crescent-shaped craters speckled over. The elegance of Viktor’s throat and the perfect hollow of his collarbones. Viktor wasn’t the only one who’d begun to take advantage of the subtle bond between them; Yuuri was a quick study, eager to please, and it was little things that made Viktor’s breath catch and made his heartbeat pick up: nibbling on an earlobe, for instance, or kissing his abdomen on the strong, lean plain near his navel, or soft skin on the inside of his wrists, more regularly covered in bracers for archery. Viktor had no doubt compiled a similar list; he’d fallen over Yuuri with a navigator’s hands, had searched out all of his edges, mapped every landscape.

He looked so peaceful in his sleep. So content. It was humbling to consider that he might’ve had anything to do with that, to sit and look and to sweep Viktor’s silver-silk hair through his fingers because he couldn’t _not_ touch him. The enormity of the choice they’d made together should have terrified him. For a moment, for a morning, Yuuri could look at Viktor while he slept, and feel at ease.

The Prince stirred, sweeping his fingers over Yuuri’s hipbones and across the small of his back, and then Viktor’s eyes parted slowly, and Yuuri let himself fall into the bright, perfect blueness of them, the one bit of summer sky in the whole mien of his winter prince. “… What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

One corner of Viktor’s mouth quirked upwards, and he leaned up to press his smirk to Yuuri’s mouth. “Fascinating,” he teased, and let the first kiss be followed with another, and then another. “Tell me more.”

Like tides. _You’re so beautiful._ “You looked happy.”

“I am happy,” Viktor murmured, and now his hands were at work again, the irresistible press of his body, his heart-shaped smile, his sparkling eyes.

Yuuri threw himself into the waves.

 

\- - -

 

_Vitya?_

_Yeah, Yura?_

_Make Christophe make Jean-Jacques give you a room._

_…_

 

_\- - -_

 

_Three weeks to Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

The next wave of revelers arrived, this time with some fanfare: Guang Hong led the processional of pilgrims up, riding alongside Kenjirou, followed by the Easterlings, the Westerners, and the Southrons alike. Overnight, Vaux Romandith became a bustling place; more pavilions were pitched in the meadow, filling up half of it with travelers; Christophe and Jean-Jacques walked among them, establishing the new order of the West, playing at politics and diplomacy and talking down the shock factor of Christophe’s return from exile.

Viktor took council with the other Princes, consulting about the status of the desert and the recent rides of the Rangers, and Yuuri _finally_ got the rest of his possessions back, helping Seung-gil move into the Eastern pavilion at the same time as he planned to take his things out of it. Phichit had barely stayed with the Southrons before he’d come rushing over, wanting a full explanation for Yuuri and Seung-gil’s sudden departure from Shen-Osheth. “You’re not staying in the Easterling camp?”

“I … No.” In theory it was a simple thing to explain, but for some reason the words were clumsy in Yuuri’s mouth. “Viktor’s staying as a guest of Jean-Jacques in the village proper,” which was curious, in terms of its timing, but he was glad to be a little further away from Yuri’s green-eyed glare, “ … and …”

“And you’re staying as a guest of Viktor?” Yuuko asked suddenly, with a subtle smile, and a dangerous knowing. Phichit looked between the two of them, shocked, and then he demanded details:

“Explain yourself,” he said, poking Yuuri in the sternum with an outstretched finger. “At once.”

“We’re … we’re …” Yuuri struggled, and closed his eyes, zeroing in on the distant thrum of Viktor’s pulse, steady and sure in the back of his thoughts. “He’s courting me.”

“I knew it!” Yuuko crooned triumphantly, and then blinked as both Phichit and Yuuri fixed her with wide-eye stares. “What?” She asked, pursing her lips and folding her arms. “Takeshi told me about what happened on the Ardor.”

Now Phichit was even more scandalized: how _dare_ Yuuri not mention these critical details, when they’d been together at Beltane? “What happened _on the ship?!”_

Yuuri pinched the bridge of his nose, hiding a smile. It was going to be a long afternoon. “Nothing happened on the ship.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“… We spent the night together on the ship. Because I got soaking wet watching Viktor use his magic to help Takeshi steer us through the thunderstorm.”

Yuuko grinned broadly. “He didn’t mind, you know,” she teased, with a toss of her hair and a too-pleased smile. “Gave him an excuse to come find _me_ when the first mate took over.”

“Now, see, that?” Yuuri murmured, almost thoughtfully: “That I’m not sure I needed to know.”

Yuuko hit him with a pillow, and then so did Phichit, and if for a few moments the Easterling tent was ensconced in nothing more than a series of shrieks and giggles, nobody in Vaux Romandith noticed. Yuuri’s things were no more organized after than they had been before, and both he and Phichit emerged from the pavilion carrying them in piles, hair mussed and cheeks flushed.

“… So you love him, huh?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri replied, certain of that, at least. “I do.”

 

\- - -

 

Assembled in the council room high in the trees, the cadre of Princes met: Viktor, who had thus far avoided the seat at the head of the table left for him; Yuri, who’d adopted a perch in an open window; Guang Hong and Kenjirou, each still weary from travel and doing their best to represent their older relatives; Jean-Jacques, looking rather determined to do his best while Christophe lounged idly on a bench on the far wall, pretending as though his presence wasn’t an extraordinary surprise.

And Otabek. The banshee stuck to a corner, leaning back idly, his arms crossed. “We seem to have broadened our ranks, Prince Viktor,” Kenjirou murmured, which was the most circumspect way he could manage of asking _what are they doing here,_ of assuaging a natural, fox-like curiosity reflected in the cautious sniff and dart of his familiar, floating around the edges of a few unfamiliar faces _._ Yuri and Jean-Jacques and Christophe all spoke at once; two of them in defense of the Ranger in the shadows:

“Otabek speaks for the Rangers —“

“He’s here because he’s _Christophe_ and I need his help —“

“Because he’s a Ranger, of course, _Princelet_ —“

“Well,” Viktor murmured dryly, glancing over his shoulder at Yuri with a brief flicker of amusement, and then across the way at Christophe, who did not look back but instead lifted one sinuous arm, twisted up in python, and waved an idle hand with an ironic smile. “now that _that’s_ clear. Otabek is here because of those presently assembled he’s the only one who’s been to the Cauldron in recent memory; Christophe is here because he can’t resist gossip —“

“I resemble that remark.”

“— and also because, I suspect, Jean-Jacques would have relayed our conversation regardless, because he’s got tremendously inconvenient ideas about loyalty and honor and courage.”

Jean-Jacques sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, leaning back in his chair to murmur to Christophe: “Are his compliments always so back-handed?”

What he received in return was an answering smirk. “Only when he’s trying to insult me.” Christophe grinned, and it was Guang Hong who cleared his throat slightly, and asked the question, tried to bring them back into some sort of bounds:

“So you’ve seen the Cauldron, Otabek? What was it —?”

“What was it like?” Otabek glanced up, his dark eyes slightly narrowed. “The actual _forge of creation?_ A volcano in the middle of the desert sitting right at the end of the scar of the first age, surrounded by revenants and wraiths _your_ people are responsible for making? What do you think it’s like —“

“Beka,” Yuri murmured, with uncharacteristic softness, and Christophe smiled slightly to himself, looking between the two: Viktor’s brother, cast in the light of the window-frame, and the Ranger Captain, keeping to the shade of the corner. Otabek looked at him, still and silent. “… Do you intend to punish _all_ sons for the sins of _all_ fathers?”

Otabek’s gaze softened somewhat, given away by a tell-tale twitch of a small muscle in his cheek. “No,” he said quietly. _You know that._

“We’re trying to help.”

“That is the way of the high elves,” he murmured carefully, still looking at Yuri, rather than the rest of the assembled council. “To leap for _solutions._ To the men who have the hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.”

“Then help them see differently,” Christophe murmured calmly, looking up from his chaise to study Otabek with an expression that was surprisingly serious. “You know it can be done. I was told you left intending to try.”

“Did you?” Viktor echoed suddenly, glancing over to Otabek with a new, calculating kind of gaze: like there were new details, new variables in an equation that he’d probably solve before the rest of them.

“I did,” Otabek confirmed: “For my whole life, the Cauldron’s gotten more volatile; nothing that would make anyone believe disaster is imminent, just a slow, steady simmering. We consider it holy ground —“

“So do we,” Viktor murmured.

“You didn’t, back then.”

“ _I,”_ Viktor reminded him, pointedly, “am tired of reminding _King_ and _Ranger_ alike that I was not _alive_ _back then.”_ For a moment their gazes met, equally assessing, equally calculating, and then Otabek continued his story as though it had not been interrupted at all.

“— and that has always seemed at odds, to me. If it’s a holy place, it ought to be better tended. After I came of age I stayed to study it further, spent as much time there as anyone, and then I decided I could not let another thousand years pass in idleness, hoping that the pax of the tribes alone would be enough. My decision to leave was not particularly well-received by some of my clansman, particularly when I announced which Court I intended to join.”

“So you came to us in study of your enemy?” Viktor asked coolly.

“I thought so at first. My opinions are … becoming more nuanced.”

Sometimes, the High Prince had more than just magic made of ice; sometimes it crept into his voice. “I should hope so.”

“Vitya.” Yuri’s voice, now, had a subtly warning edge. “He’s not _wrong._ ”

 _No, but he’s not quite right, either, and I think for a very long time he’s believed he was, which is nearly more dangerous._ Still, Viktor glanced back at his brother, raised an eyebrow to underscore the point, and sat back in silence. For a moment nobody spoke, and then Christophe reached out with a toe to nudge Jean-Jacques’ chair, a prompt that was in no way subtle but which shook the newest Prince into the discussion.

“It would partially explain the higher number of incursions if the region’s more volatile as a whole,” he said, carefully; _partially_ because after Christophe lost the right to rule, even his parents had chosen to go man the havens to the Far West, and for too long they’d been left with a throne that was empty, which now he was meant to sit upon. “How was the trip coming here?”

“Nothing like what you seem to have encountered,” Kenjirou said, speaking up: “Yuuri and Seung-gil left in such a hurry…”

“We encountered a few revenants. They were small. No sign of a dragon.”

“... Others of my clan came south from A’ve Palmera to help, after the battle on the Sunset Road.”

“Your father will want to hear of all this, Vitya.” Christophe murmured. “Do you want the stone?”

“Perhaps later,” Viktor murmured thoughtfully, lacing his fingers together. “… But I would not count on the bear of the North for this. The strength that built Mosciren is not what it was at the dawn of this age.” Behind him, Yuri frowned subtly, crossing his arms, and across the way, Guang Hong looked elsewhere. It took Kenjirou’s curiosity to ask the question:

“What are you trying to say?”

“I am telling you that if this is a problem meant to be solved,” Viktor said, “it will be met by the generation of Princes in this room, and not the ones who forged the first years of this age.”

Later, Viktor found Yuuri on the edge of the meadow, slipped close, pressed a kiss to his forehead. From a distance, Yuri studied this: the newfound softness of his older brother, cold edges made gentler, smile more genuine than it had been in years. Together the edges around the two of them blurred; Yuuri’s smile was soft, too, and he briefly touched Viktor’s face, while Viktor’s fingers curled over his hips.

In this picture there was none of the storm or stress of his parents when they collided; it was gentle, made him think back to Otabek, trying to explain something about light and purity and weakness. He wasn’t alone in this observing; Otabek, too, was making calculations, and Christophe’s keen perception never seemed to let up:

“He was like that when he was younger, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he murmured quietly. “Don’t get too worried. It’s a good thing.”

“Nobody asked you,” Yuri muttered darkly, waving Christophe away; the Western steward merely shrugged and flashed another one of his too-charismatic smiles, because of course Yuri had sat there, wondering, and the empath knew it, as plain as day: _didn’t you, though?_

 

\- - -

 

_One week to Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

Festivities began with a parade of flowers, a procession of mages each holding a platter of harvest grains and freshly-cut flowers arranged for an autumn offering. The order of the processional began with Isabella and Jean-Jacques, carrying a bright array of sunflowers and ivies and deep red chrysanthemums artfully placed inside of a pumpkin. Isabella, who Viktor had learned at Litha had a knack for this sort of thing, had declared the processional’s order thereafter, surprising even Viktor, who watched as Kenjirou led the Easterlings forward, bearing a minimalist arrangement of autumn leaves and twisted wheat, berries, and a single, bright sunflower. It was graceful but sparse, crafted on the balance of its elements rather than the brilliance of them, and in that alone came the answer:

_Minako._

Of course; one of his mother’s first students, the artist of the East. She’d called Yuuri one of her best students in turn. Viktor smiled to himself, appreciative: Yuuri hadn’t mentioned that he’d be helping the Easterling Prince at all, and yet here he was, surprising him still, and someday, someday soon, Lilia was going to have the opportunity to watch him dance, and to see what it was he saw when the halfling disposed of his anxieties and revealed his underlying graces. Yura followed with Mila, their bundle of flowers made up primarily of whites and reds and subtle streaks of autumn gold. He was, no doubt, irritated by Isabella’s choice to place him behind the revelers from the East and their young Prince. Guang Hong came last, walking along with Phichit, both carrying a bouquet spread out on the platter that was, perhaps, too much of everything: yellow roses and bright sunflowers and red snapdragons, big and mixed and bright. Still, even that reflected Shen-Osheth, forever a mix of a thousand different influences, the Southerners unwilling to adhere to the neat lines of his father’s preference for clean and cold tradition.

He had watched the festivals pass all these years with such relative disinterest, as though there was nothing new to learn from them.

Even though harvest was coming, Viktor was finally starting to feel alive.

 

\- - -

 

_The week of Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

The Westerners couldn’t be satisfied with just the one event. Lughnasadh stretched into a week of games and contests, each one different, each one followed by harvest feasting and the sweet, pale ale made by the farmers of the plains. Yuri sipped at a mug of the stuff, watching as Otabek prepared to face Georgi for the title in the evening’s event: sparring with a quarterstaff, and, almost blithely, he leaned over and murmured to the person sitting next to him:

“Beka’s going to win.” Great plan, except:

“You think so?” The person next to him wasn’t Viktor, or even Mila, for that matter; it was the damn Halfling with his stupid phoenix familiar, left there by the two other traitors who’d gone … somewhere. Yuri thought food might have been a part of that equation. One of the bakers had made great loaves of braided bread, which Viktor had declared _amazing!_ in such a delighted tone that Yuri had nearly begun to inspect his older brother for a head injury.

“Yeah.” Georgi was plenty good with long weapons like this, had grown up studying the longsword and the spear, and Yuri’d gotten into the sparring arena with him plenty of times and _lost._ He’d come to realize, though, the difference: Otabek had grown up in the wilderness, had fought with shadows for his entire life, and the banshee’s instincts were no accident: they were the result of _practice._ “Too bad for Georgi, he’s usually pretty good…”

“Mm.” Yuuri smiled gently, and then glanced back over at Yuri: “You must be proud of him.”

Here was dangerous ground, the strange dance they were all doing around each other while trying to acclimate. Yuri glanced over sharply, trying to read the polite mask of the halfling’s face, and received no answers. Sometimes Yuuri could be as aloof as his brother; other times he was more legible than any scroll in Lilia’s library. “Which one?”

Yuuri’s smile grew. “All of them,” he said then.

“I am,” grumbled Yuri, and then he stood up. “You need a drink.”

“Do I?”

“I’ve just realized how like Vitya you are: not presently tipsy enough to be honest.”

The rest of that evening had passed in a blur: Yuri’s prediction proved prescient, because he was soon celebrating with Otabek, who wound up awarded a crown of leaves for his victory, and then Christophe had come along, and there’d been more ale, a tremendous amount of dancing …

… Viktor had taken his shirt off, complaining about the heat; then _someone_ had incited an awful lot of dancing, and … Yuuri woke up with a hangover and the fingers of a northern prince sweeping through his hair, soft as feathers. “You put my brother to _shame_ last night,” he crooned, grinning bright and fond:

“I barely remember it,” Yuuri grunted, miserably, closing his eyes while the room swayed to-and-fro, almost the way the Ardor had, across the waves, except that had been soporific and this was anything but: “don’t ever let that happen again.”

Viktor looked entirely too pleased, and he was; had laughed and laughed and _laughed_ the night before, whirling through the trees, a whole new self. “Never,” he said smartly, and then he laid back down, settled in as something cool and strong at Yuuri’s back, the point of his chin pressed into the halfling’s shoulder. There was something steadying about the cradle of their bodies, and the idle drape of one of Viktor’s arms over Yuuri’s waist. The smirk, too: Yuuri didn’t need to see it to feel it. “You looked entirely too good doing it to make that sort of a promise.”

 

\- - -

 

There were other games, too. Kenjirou, trying his best at archery, did not manage to unseat the High Prince, and Yuri won a race of horses on the track around the lake. _What are you competing in, then,_ he’d wanted to know, and Yuuri told him: marathon, the runner’s race on the lakeside trail.

To run at distance was a challenge of mind over matter. He never felt as strong at Lughnasadh as he felt at Litha or Beltane, not quite so young or nearly as invincible, but he was healthy enough; could ignore the protests of his bones as he pressed onwards, chasing the red bolt of the phoenix as it flew steadily ahead. The bird looked older, at this time of year, mature and regal, in its last days before the decline.

Yuuri ran anyway, more and more miles, because what he wanted was more and more life.

Viktor was there at the finish line, arms open, solid and steady as the distance Yuuri had crossed, nothing fleeting, everything sure.

 

\- - -

 

On the last day of the games Yuuri learned something new, watching Viktor swim, putting a steady and growing distance between himself and the weather mage they’d first met, Emil. It put all new meaning to the phrase _in his element,_ the elegance with which he cut through the water, all agility, finesse, and ease.

Shaking out the silver of his hair created a whole burst of droplets, each one refracting the late summer light, and before Yuuri knew it, he was being splashed by the elder prince and casually shoved off the dock by the younger, punishment, apparently, for the precise way in which he’d been staring.

 

\- - -

 

_The week of Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

At the end of the week it was possible to feel precisely as exhausted as summer was, ready for the coming of the seasons of rest. Of all of the revelers who’d traveled only Guang Hong, Phichit, and Kenjirou still had the energy to keep dancing around the harvest fires with their Western hosts; Yuuri had long since given up, tired, and gone to lay down on a long bench where eventually and steadily three others had gathered. First there had been Viktor, who’d merely rearranged Yuuri’s head so that it lay in his lap, and who had sat in companionable silence, linking up their hands while the sun set, and then Yuri, perhaps in search of his brother, and finally Otabek, who sat on the far side of the row they made together, and who shifted subtly to make his frame ready for the slope of of Yuri’s shoulder.

For a long time they sat like that, and said nothing at all, and Yuuri was almost asleep when Otabek murmured:

“Do you really think you can help it? The cauldron?”

 _Fix what,_ Yuuri had wanted to ask, opening his eyes but not yet ready to move.

“I don’t,” admitted Viktor, “but I’m currently receiving an education on how not to do things alone, and evidently I’m welcoming a ban side to the family, so …” He turned his head and flashed a wry smile. “One makes due.”

“Could be worse,” Yuri quipped lazily. “Could be a _halfling.”_

“Hey,” Yuuri mumbled, though somehow he wasn’t particularly offended; perhaps because Viktor had reached over to give his brother a shove that reverberated onto Otabek, something that felt easy and comfortable and familiar.

“Quit complaining,” Yuri shot back, smirking in the dark, but it sounded like a welcome, something like: _welcome to the world’s most dysfunctional family,_ their first collective joke.

After a moment, even Otabek was laughing.

 

\- - -

 

_The morning after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

He woke early, before dawn, with the marathon’s ache still in his limbs and a phlegmy kind of cough, the sort of nuisance that Yuuri knew could work its way through lungs and into bloodstream and bone.

Harmless now.

Fatal later.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... not too sure how I feel about this one, actually, but I needed to just get it done somehow. 
> 
> Next week is super busy for me so I'm not sure you'll get an update on my usual pace. It may be a full week or more, sorry! But: our heroes will travel back to the North, and we'll be back on the track of trying to see what it is they all intend to do about this set of issues.


	15. the horizon you ride towards

_Two days after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

The Northerners made plans to leave Vaux Romandith behind sooner than the other revelers; Yuuri said his goodbyes with some regret to Kenjirou and Yuuko, who would travel later, along with the new Prince and his Steward, after Guang Hong’s court was temporarily settled, on the normal cycle of the Wheel. Phichit was cheerful, operating under the assumption that the only reason for a swift departure was Yuuri’s impending introduction to Viktor’s parents. _They’ll love you! How could they not love you? Best dress up just in case, though,_ he’d chirped all the way through breakfast: _I hear Yakov’s a menace._ Then, reading Yuuri’s wince, he’d tried to make up for it: _Evidently Lilia likes dancing?_

He had not been so oblivious to not read the subtle shifts in the group’s mood, though, and as they left he climbed up to a low branch overhanging Vaux Romandith’s northern exit, leading to the King’s Road:

“You look after him, Viktor, you hear me?”

Viktor turned to look back, inclined his head, eyes serious as the grave: _I intend to._

The King’s Road wound steadily northwards, running alongside a long, lazy river flowing down from the mountains. First they cleared the woods, and then gradually these thinned, leading to sweeping green valleys where placid sheep grazed, and wild horses ran, and both generally ignored the travelers who rode North at an easy pace. This was a path Viktor had traveled more than all of the others, and as they rode, he pointed out landmarks, told stories. They made camp the first night in a circle of stones too perfectly formed to be any accident. “My mother thinks the first schools of magic were here,” Viktor murmured, sweeping his fingers over shapeless stone, half-archways now crumbling. “Ancient libraries that weren’t preserved…”

“Why is that?”

“Everything back then was oral history,” Otabek murmured, tossing a log onto the campfire. Fresh sparks flickered, making Seung-gil’s hellhound raise one of its three heads to snap at embers of flame. “… Easy to remember when you’re going to live forever,” he added thoughtfully, with a glance towards Seung-gil, already stretched out on a bedroll nearby, pretending like he wasn’t listening.

Viktor tilted his head, acknowledgment of the theory. “Still. We have some artifacts of the past,” he murmured, and his eyes took on a softer light, the way they tended to whenever Viktor was contemplating something he found beautiful. It was a look usually reserved for the ocean and, lately, for Yuuri of Katsuki House when he slept, when he danced, and especially in those moments when he revealed the truest parts of himself, certain that nobody was looking. “I’ll show you when we get there,” he murmured, and took off his cloak, draping it over Yuuri’s shoulders as he came to sit nearby on the grass. Yuuri looked up, surprised, and Viktor’s smile grew a little sad, anxiety creeping into the corners of his eyes. “You were shivering,” he explained quietly. “Move a little closer to the fire. I won’t get cold.”

“… I’m nervous about meeting them,” Yuuri admitted, as though that had been the reason for the chill. Still, he did as Viktor asked, and Viktor followed, settling him easily into the hollow of his chest, between his long legs. He’d become, quickly, so … so … _public_ about them, and yet his court had acclimated swiftly: Mila talked to Yuuri easily, like he was one of the Northerners, and Georgi was making an effort, happy to see his Prince so at ease, even if he sometimes looked at the two of them with a sort of pain, a strange nostalgia that Yuuri knew had nothing to do with him or, for that matter, with Viktor. Even Yuri had shared his lunch, insisted he eat in that brusque, careless way of his.

“Neither one of them is in the habit of making things easy,” Viktor murmured thoughtfully, flashing a wry smile. In one moment he’d acknowledged the rightness of the halfling’s fears, and in the next he was trying to sweep them away, brushing his lips against Yuuri’s neck. “I’m not worried, though. They love me, and I love _you.”_

“Ugh,” Yuri grumbled from across the circle. “Are we going to have to listen to this all week?”

“No,” Viktor hummed, the picture of innocence, and then he decided to spare his brother public humiliation in front of their friends, looking up with a smirk. _I imagine later this week we’ll be turning our attention to how you’re going to explain why you keep sitting next to the Captain of the Guard, who happens to be a banshee, Yura._ Rewarded with the blonde’s blossoming scowl, he flashed his heart-shaped grin: “Care to start practicing now?”

“I’d throw something at you if I was sure it wouldn’t accidentally hit the halfling,” Yuri grumbled, which was the closest thing he’d come to a compliment of Yuuri, who was already nearly dozing, lulled by the echoing answer of Viktor’s heartbeat in his ears; like his entire being was a question and Viktor’s steady heart the perfect response, singing: _yes, yes, yes._

 

\- - -

 

_Five days after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

It began to rain halfway to Ast Petyriel, and still they rode onwards. Yuuri banished his phoenix, but Viktor’s stag rode among them, nearly corporeal in the center of a circle of riders. Viktor hardly paid attention to his horse, letting it follow his brother’s lead, shifting the water overhead to other places as they traveled steadily Northeast. _He_ was soaked through-and-through; his silver hair clung to his forehead, to his shoulders, and still, every so often, he threw his head back and smiled up at the rain. _Beautiful_ was a word that came into Yuuri’s thoughts often, though he so far had resisted the urge to beg to stop, the twitch in his fingers that wanted to wipe raindrops off of Viktor’s high cheekbones, or to comb through the wet tangles of his hair. Instead, he rode on in companionable silence, almost perfectly dry, something Yuri had remarked on with withering sarcasm on nearly an hourly basis.

“Viktor,” Yuuri explained, exasperated, “I can handle a little rain.”

Viktor pursed his lips for a moment, slightly thoughtful, and then smirked to himself. A single burst of rainfall fell through the array he’d been holding up to keep the others, and particularly Yuuri, dry, not at all unlike a wave splashed over the lake. “Hey!”

“What,” Viktor asked, ignoring both Mila’s bright laugh as well as his brother’s snicker. He reached over to ruffle Yuuri’s hair, slicking his bangs back and away from his face. “You said you could handle it.”

 

\- - -

 

_Eight days after Lugnasadh, 1017 II Age_

The landscape changed. Green vales gave way to a steady climb into the foothills, wooded forests with evergreens and aspens and pines. Yuuri hardly recalled his last trip; in the fall the aspens turned golden and he’d thought them beautiful but beautiful as though seen through a very cloudy mirror: he’d been too sick to appreciate them properly. It was too early for the change now, but according to Viktor they’d be staying in his mother’s house for some time, and so perhaps he’d get to witness the way winter crept in from the palace at Ast Petyriel for once. A pair of trumpeters welcomed them through the city’s large gates; stonework that was reminiscent of Yakov’s magic but was likely of Lilia’s design, wrought as a gift in her honor. Viktor had already described his favorite parts of his mother’s city over and over; though he’d spent his more recent years in Mosciren with Yakov, and was terribly fond of the glaciers beyond Mosciren peaks, a strange light in his eyes suggested that Ast Petyriel felt more like home.

As they passed through, Viktor and Yuri lowered their hoods, and cobblestone streets of scholars and mages cleared to make way for the two Princes. Here, people stopped to acknowledge them both; to clasp a hand over their hearts and bow. _Of course,_ thought Yuuri, watching as Viktor’s face became something more polished, but also more withdrawn: _he’ll be their leader someday._

 _… and he wants you here, too._ It was a stark reminder, a sudden, heavy weight that made his breath catch in his throat and not just because he needed to stop to admire the mix of stone and woodcraft here; the fine archways, the high domes, the way the entire city had come to being within the whim of the forest, with pockets of green everywhere. Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t even notice when they came to a stop. “Idiot,” Yuri grumbled, “get off your horse. We’re at the stables.”

A flicker of something like curiosity, familiar, drew Yuuri back into the present as he dismounted. It felt like Mari, who so frequently left him to his own devices, and in spite of his present concerns he thought for a moment of his own home; of Hasetsuil, of sunrise over the ocean, of the gentle, simple smiles of both of his parents and the hearth-warmth of family. Viktor moved closer, twined their fingers together, and Yuuri found himself staring at their hands. He was here, now, in the Northern Kingdom. Viktor was perfectly serious about walking him through the high street like this, up and into Lilia’s estate. “Relax,” he said gently, and leaned over to kiss Yuuri’s temple. “I have a surprise for you.”

He couldn’t stop himself: “What is it?”

Viktor’s blue eyes twinkled. “Wait and see.”

The street itself was fashioned out of an incredible mosaic, routinely swept free of falling pine needles, and it wound a short distance between wooden structures with multiple rising domes to the sprawling estate at the end of the street, its high doorways fashioned in stained glass and protected by another set of mage-guards. While they walked Viktor directed his attention idly towards the other buildings on the street; the forum, for instance, where Lilia taught her students and had once instructed Minako; the library, so well-known in all the four Kingdoms. He was so preoccupied absorbing this information that he didn’t notice the cluster waiting for them at the palace until someone shouted his own name.

“Yuuri!”

_… Mom?_

Later nobody would be certain whose footfalls came first, though it was Yuuri who closed the most distance, found himself absorbed into the soft embrace of Hiroko and Toshiya’s arms. A triangle of observers stood at points around this circle: Mari, who was the closest, leaning in to lay a hand on her younger brother’s shoulder; Lilia, with sharp green eyes that saw _everything,_ including the way Viktor stood a little bit off to the side staring at this family reunion with a subtle longing and quiet envy.

Lilia also saw the way Toshiya and Hiroko broke off to acknowledge her son, to bow — (“you bow to no one,” Viktor had protested, because they were _Yuuri’s_ parents, because their son bore _the phoenix_ ) — the way Hiroko nonetheless still broke protocols by coming forward to reach up and touch Viktor’s face. It changed his entire mien, this quiet acceptance, and then the halfling he’d chosen came forward with an embrace that was sudden and fierce and the whole lot of them repeated the entire circle. The lot of them were too short to completely engulf the Prince, but she hadn’t needed to see his surprise, or the way his smile changed; Vitya was her son before he was anything else, and Lilia could feel it.

He was nowhere near as surprised as his lover, though, the halfling who’d burrowed into his chest. “How did you — why — “

Viktor smiled, gratified; Yuuri’s family had kept the secret, and kept it well: they’d come here on an outlandish story given via his word and his mother’s request, and then they’d surrounded him, accepted him instantaneously and without question. Yuuri was not going to be given nearly so easy a time. Not once in his life had Viktor ever envied the simpler life enjoyed by anyone who wasn’t nobility, until Hiroko of Hasetsuil touched the side of his face, until he’d found himself surrounded by the people who’d loved Yuuri long before he’d known to do so. “I asked Lilia for a summons when we spoke on the wayseeing stone,” he explained warmly, as Yuuri’s fingers curled into his cloak, pulled him somehow closer.

“Tch,” muttered Yuri, standing next to Lilia, but he was fighting a smile: _how sentimental._ Still, he leaned over to kiss his mother’s high cheek. _Missed you, mama._

Lilia’s hand fell on his shoulder, squeezed it, and she said little else. The family link filled in for the absence of her words; an abiding fondness for her younger son, even if it came severe or sharp, and a patient curiosity that would eventually demand answers, for the elder.

“Mother,” Viktor said, once he’d extricated himself properly from Easterling arms, smiling in a way that she’d not seen for decades. It made her think of a boy she’d seen darting through these trees once, before he’d become so aware of his father’s expectations, before he’d gotten his heart broken the first time, before he’d decided to strive for invulnerability, for legend. Across the bond of their family his heart surged, even if an answering rumble from Yakov promised something like trouble. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. This is Yuuri. Yuuri, this is my mother, Lilia.”

The Queen of the Elves. Empress of Winter. Steward of the ancient library of Ast Petyriel. Vitya bypassed the titles simply through the deference in his tone; the name _Lilia_ carried itself.

Yuuri, the halfling who made her son smile his original smile, turned and looked at her wide-eyed and nervous, all awe and careful dread. He seemed to make a concentrated effort to summon his manners, to replicate the Northerner’s bow, and Lilia shook her head sternly.

“My son has already declared your family bows to no one, Yuuri. I will not make him a liar today.”

 

\- - -

 

Someone else took all their possessions inside. _Spend the day with your family,_ Viktor insisted, offering a passing kiss on the cheek. _I’ll be at the library. Mother would like to see you later, in the forum._ So Yuuri had: he’d learned that Lilia had housed his parents and his sister within her own estate, and that they’d flown up on the eagles, and, in one of the best surprises of the day, that even Vicchan had remained.

“He wouldn’t stay behind,” Mari explained, smoothing the feathers of the eagle who’d carried her all this way. “He must’ve suspected we were coming for you.”

Yuuri saw himself reflected in the big, dark circles of Vicchan’s eyes, gave the great eagle a hug of its own, settled in under the sweep of one wing. “Go for a flight,” Hiroko suggested. “We’ll be here when you get back.”

So this was what he and Mari had done, circling the great forest of evergreens from above, darting through the shafts of light that poked through the clouds that lingered from the storm they’d ridden in under. _So … Viktor? How did that even …?_

 _I don’t know,_ Yuuri admitted, honestly, and then perhaps because he didn’t have to speak, like this, to think things through, he let his thoughts drift back to the Ardor, to Beltane, to the Sunset Road. _At first I thought it was called falling in love because it happens so unconsciously, like love is something that happens to you, but at Lughnasadh everything was different._ At Lughnasadh there’d been no secrets, just their extended hands and a choice. _Maybe the first part was a hope. Now it’s a choice._

Mari listened, thought little in return, but in their family bond he felt Toshiya’s pride and Hiroko’s love and his sister’s determined support. They flew on in companionable silence until the sun was low in the sky, prompting Yuuri to remember his promise to meet Lilia at the forum. … _It’ll hurt him, when you go._

 _I know,_ Yuuri thought, circling down to dismount, and then to fondly pat Vicchan’s beak from the ground. _How do you put up with it, now?_

“Knowing it’s coming is half the battle,” Mari hummed quietly, though it was something he knew his sister didn’t like to talk about. “Knowing you’ll be back, too.”

 

\- - -

 

Lilia awaited him in an empty courtyard of the forum, dotted with statues of the heroes of old, seated in front of a large loom where she was at work making a new tapestry. Yuuri’d seen others like it, briefly, in the estate; older ones that told the story of the young age and the first age, celebrated the high culture of the aes sidhe. They were beautiful, intricate things; the familiars in them looked as though they were still alive, and up close he’d been able to read the noble expressions of the aes sidhe of all the stories, on the tragic fall of their mortality, of the warning song of their pride, of their terrible, misguided war. “I spoke to Minako about you at some length,” she admitted coolly, as Yuuri stepped inside. “My former pupil says you’re a student of our high arts?”

“… I am,” murmured Yuuri, not certain what else he should say to this woman, so severe and so proud; Ast Petyriel’s sage and its muse.

“Show me,” Lilia commanded, and his lips almost twitched. At the start of the year Viktor had been the same: had wrapped all of his questions up as sentences, expected his answers. Except there was the reality of his magic, already waning, and the sheer terror that he might disappoint. That he could cast ribbons of flame for this woman, and dance until his feet were blistered, and still she might look at Viktor with those citrine eyes and say _you have chosen poorly._

“I’m not at my best, this time of year,” he added, cautiously, trying to breathe in time with the distant thrum of Viktor’s resting pulse.

“She told me you would say that,” said Lilia archly. “She also said it wouldn’t matter.”

Yuuri exhaled and closed his eyes, and then he swept his arms overhead, gold and red flickering to life in his palms. Perhaps if he kept his eyes closed he could envision this was Minako’s studio instead, where he went long after the other students were gone, practiced magic in peace and privacy, danced to clear out his own head.

“No, no, _no_.” Lilia’ interrupted him, and Yuuri floundered to a stop mid-spin, bent over to cough and clear the lingering phlegm in his chest. She waited for this much, at least. “Don’t just go through the motions, child.” _Child,_ she said, which he supposed was a fair distinction, given the centuries of difference that yawned between their ages. “I’ve seen Minako’s work plenty of times. You wish me to believe that you love my son, yes? Show me what you’ve discovered since meeting Vitya. Show me what you found at Beltane.”

Yuuri paused, at the very precipice of refusing, and then he let his thoughts drift back to Viktor, to _Vitya,_ to what he’d told Mari earlier about falling and about choice. He began again, from that place, considering the astonishing, odds-defying _fact_ of Viktor’s _love._ Viktor, whose blue eyes were more enthralling than any art he’d see in Ast Petyriel; Viktor, whose every smile was a new variation on the word perfect.

Every so often he felt the subtle brush of one of her hands, checking the extension of his arms, and then, coming to a slow stop, chest heaving for breath, magic fading, Yuuri felt the need to bend over, palms resting on his knees, to slowly sink to the ground to sit. Lilia’s expression seemed as unchanged as the noble statues he’d seen throughout the city, as the ancient elves of the tapestries, and yet she was regarding him differently now. “Very good,” she murmured. “So that was Beltane?”

“No,” Yuuri replied weakly, catching his breath, a hand over his chest, “that was Lughnasadh.”

 

\- - -

 

It was terribly late when he found Viktor in the library, seated at an oversized wooden desk, hunched over the latest in a large pile of scrolls. The Prince’s hair was loose, and his expression weary, and he jumped when Yuuri’s hands slid over his shoulders, relaxed subtly as Yuuri brushed his hair aside, kissed the nape of his neck. “We missed you at dinner.”

“I had them bring something here,” said Viktor, which Yuuri could see for himself: the plate had gone mostly untouched, the meal itself an afterthought to whatever it was Viktor was looking for and had not yet found. _A cure. A way to make sure you don’t die._ He stretched, now, and turned to face Yuuri with a tired smile that must’ve mirrored Yuuri’s own. “You’ve made an impression on mother,” he added, and the smile stretched a little, trying to grow bigger, but it also flickered the way a candle might’ve in a storm. In his eyes there was a sea of doubts, and Yuuri knew without asking that this first day of research had proved fruitless.

He debated saying something encouraging, but Viktor knew better than almost anyone the enormity of Ast Petyriel’s library, of the tomes and books Lilia kept. Had he already sent his mother through its archives, Yuuri wondered, and was looking now for himself, unwilling to surrender to fate?

“Your family,” Yuuri murmured instead, because it was more honest, “is _exhausting_.” That, at least, earned him the reward of Viktor’s laugh, brittle though it was, and he bent over for a kiss, put himself within the loose circle of Viktor’s arms.

“Two down and one to go,” Viktor chuckled mirthlessly, and Yuuri nosed closer, let his hands run along the Prince’s forearms.

At first he said nothing, thinking of the afternoon’s flight and the evening’s trial. “Come back to the house,” Yuuri said softly, as the Phoenix came to life, perched on his shoulder, as subtle washes of gold bled over his fingertips. “Enough reading for one day.”

“I need — there’s still a lot to go through, I want to stay here —“ _I said I would spare you from this. I am going to spare you._ Yet the halfling moved closer, straddled him on the chair, hungry for something closer than the loose embrace Viktor had held him in so half-heartedly. The whispers of gold pooling in Yuuri’s hands bloomed, spread softly over Viktor’s arms, and Viktor looked up sharply. “Yuuri, I’m not _tired_ , I don’t need _energy_ —“

“ _That,”_ Yuuri remarked pointedly, as his own magic drew backwards, retreated to his palms, “is not what I’m doing.”

What else, then? … _Oh._ The bond between them had been Viktor’s initiative both times; desperation at Beltane and purpose in Lughnasadh, and here was Yuuri, trying to deepen it in a way he’d been so careful to avoid, waiting for Ast Petyriel, for their families, for the perfect moment when he walked out of this room with a book and a cure, the future assured.

“I won’t stop you from looking,” Yuuri added, pressing his lips to Viktor’s cheek. “I just want you to remember that I’m still here now.”

Viktor turned his head, suddenly unsatisfied with just the passing brush of Yuuri’s mouth. This kiss was longer and deeper and he didn’t need to open his eyes to understand the answering wisps of silver and white in his hands, his acquiescence. “Nobody could forget you, Yuuri,” he whispered, and then he moved to shift the halfling’s weight, to stand. Properly chastised, Viktor remembered the promise of his own room, waiting for them both, and how he’d sworn he’d show Yuuri around his home, to direct him to all of the places that he loved most. “I’ll take you home.”

They walked hand-in-hand back to Lilia’s estate, through the stained glass doors now dark and nearly colorless at night, back to Viktor’s room. There the ordinary things happened, domestic habits that had formed somewhere on the road together: changing into sleep clothes, washing up, and then Yuuri found himself sitting opposite Viktor on the bed, cross-legged. “Vitya,” he asked, because it was usually Viktor who did all the asking, and it was selfish, perhaps, to keep _wanting_ this, to keep choosing it in spite of what was coming as soon as winter set. “Are you sure?”

Viktor said nothing, but held out an open hand, awash in argentine and azure. Yuuri took it, vermillion and gold, and then he pressed a palm to Viktor’s chest, just over his heart. Viktor’s fingers, cool and steady, did the same, and he closed his eyes to listen, to feel, to sink further into this strange, ancient magic.

“Your heartbeat is always so fast,” Viktor murmured quietly, though he’d known it was different, between all the races; the part of Yuuri he could sense now, that pulse, was always a quick flutter in his ears, sometimes nearly twice the rate of his own.

“… Yours is always so steady,” Yuuri replied, and his fingers curled briefly against Viktor’s skin, and Viktor allowed himself the pleasure of studying the halfling’s face, his closed eyes, his semi-smile. Soon he, too, felt a little adrift between the wash of magic, their two pulses, and he found himself thinking back to mid-morning, to the way Yuuri’s family had willingly embraced him without asking anything in return.

He fell into it then, something soft and warm and abiding, something like summer sunshine and the promise of home. At its edges were Yuuri’s worries and cares; his inadequacies and his terror of the legacy Viktor was bringing him into but these were small things, fragile and weak in comparison to the first: to the wash of heat that bent towards him and was choosing him, even now.

_This is what Yuuri’s love is like._

Yuuri felt the churning waves of Viktor’s doubt; his fear of loss; the heavy mantle of leadership. Underneath these curls of surface concerns lingered something vast and deep and wide, powerful as winter storms and yet perfectly like the sea out at its furthest horizon, where it was cerulean tranquility, assured and inevitable, poised and perfect. All of this waited for him, promised to uphold him, to let him lie adrift and at ease in it: this sweep of currents that bent in his direction, wrapped around him in power and in safety.

_This is what Viktor’s love is like._

He crept closer as the magic settled, hypnotized by the fresh wash of these feelings; _what Viktor felt, what Yuuri felt._

They kissed until they were too tired to kiss; fell asleep in a lover’s knot.

Every time he thought he’d begun to take the measure of this love it grew bigger.

 

\- - -

 

In the morning Viktor woke first, his head already heavy with _expectation_ and something firm and hard. He’d come to expect Yuuri awake earlier, so attuned to the rise and sink of the sun, but this morning Yuuri slept on, his head pillowed against Viktor’s shoulder, his fingers still curled inside of Viktor’s robes in that subtly and unconsciously possessive way that was _so delightful._ Now he heard more than Yuuri’s heartbeat; even in his sleep he could still feel the gentle warmth of his love. A deep cough, not Yuuri’s, rather like an _ahem,_ stopped Viktor’s smile before it could even form.

“Hello, Father.” So Yakov had come down, _straight off the mountain._

“Vitya,” Yakov returned, sitting in a chair in the corner with an answering scowl that was more intimidating than anything Yuri had yet managed to craft. It was Viktor’s nickname, meant to be said in fondness, and yet only Yakov could make it sound like an insult: _Idiot._

 _Most people knock,_ Viktor thought pointedly, trying his hardest not to wake Yuuri up.

“Most people aren’t the King of the Elves.” Evidently this wasn’t a consideration for Yakov.

Viktor pretended to consider that, though he refused to stir, too comfortable here in his own bed, too determined to try and let Yuuri rest. _I’m not conceding the point,_ he replied, _Mother’s right. You’re rather uncivilized sometimes._ Yakov snorted, and the whole thing proved fruitless; Yuuri yawned there in his arms, which was _adorable,_ and then his eyes widened as he processed Viktor’s flicker of fondness, as well as his consternation. “What’s going — oh —“

Yakov was sitting in a chair in Viktor’s room, looking at them both with an expression that was best described as permanently unimpressed.

“Oh, _gods.”_

“Quit panicking.” Viktor sighed irritably, and sat up on his elbows. “His face is always like that.”

“Show some respect.”

Viktor’s eyes narrowed suddenly. “ _You first,”_ he insisted, tilting his chin up in a way Yuuri was beginning to think of as genetic Northern stubbornness, and ancient pride. “You’ve always wanted to bring back the ancient days,” he added sharply. “Here you are, Yakov. In the presence of the phoenix.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> made it through the crazy week, sorry for the delay. will try to get around to ch. 16 over the weekend hopefully~
> 
> not so much on the yura + beka front this time, but dad's in town now, so, /you know./ 
> 
> also because i expect to get questions (which i love but whatever pre-empting this one) bonds are a three, or if you like, three-and-a-half step process; step one is pulses; step two is feelings; step three links thoughts and then there's a ritual to join families. this is step two. 
> 
> also also i have a tumblr now: https://handsingsweapon.tumblr.com/


	16. the thing you can never lasso

_Here you are, Yakov. In the presence of the phoenix._

Yuuri squirmed, suddenly uncomfortable, and he started to sit up only to feel the brush of one of Viktor’s hands against his back, encouraging otherwise. He looked up to catch Viktor’s blue gaze, which was steady and curiously focused. What he felt was something different and separating the threads of it was a new and clumsy effort: Viktor was angry, it seemed, at Yakov. Or … Indignant was a better word. Underneath this was a steely resolve that Yuuri would not have wanted to be on the other side of, though Yakov himself seemed unaffected by it, and a possessiveness that might’ve made him blush if he hadn’t already been terribly embarrassed, having been caught in such a state by the _King._ “My name is Yuuri,” he explained, mortified.

Yakov barely spared him a glance, grunting: “I know who you are. Get dressed, Vitya. We’re going for a walk.”

“There’s nothing you could possibly have to say to me that I wouldn’t repeat to him.”

One of Yakov’s eyebrows rose as he looked at Viktor pointedly. _Really,_ thought the King dryly, and, having correctly called his son’s bluff he stood up, walked over to the trunk on the floor, and promptly threw a tunic in Viktor’s direction. “Now,” he emphasized, and then he stood up, and walked back to the door, and let himself out.

It did _not_ close behind him, a purposeful gesture that drew another flicker of irritation from Viktor, who fell back down among the pillows and deliberately ignored his shirt. His hands roamed Yuuri’s back, nothing more than a reassurance of the Halfling’s presence, and after a moment he turned his head, sought out the soft light of a good morning kiss. _Every morning,_ he decided. Yakov and Lilia were bonded and could hardly stand to share the same space, their individual personalities too big and too strong to share in the physical present. He was never going to make the same mistake. Every morning and every night would start and end with this softness, gentle as a lapping wave.

The floor shook suddenly, ominously; Yakov’s stone magic at work, the pounding of the ancient grizzly, rumbling through the earth. It startled Yuuri enough to rattle that persistent cough which clung to him, these days, and Viktor’s anger came swiftly once more and almost immediately burned back out, the first flash of a promised thunderstorm replaced instead by an enveloping _worry._

 _Don’t,_ Yuuri wanted to say, because he didn’t want to spend a whole season talking illness, thinking too long on death. Instead he thought pointedly about the things he did want: the bright joy of dancing together, and the cool softness of Viktor’s hands, and the perfect comfort of lying together, like this, with the morning light streaming through the window. Viktor gave a long-suffering sigh and reached for the shirt he’d been thrown, pulled it on over his head. He kissed Yuuri’s forehead and climbed out of bed, then strode barefoot and unkempt for the door. “Don’t worry about this,” Viktor promised. “I’ll take care of it.”

 

\- - -

 

The interrogation began as soon as they hit the courtyard. “What _are_ you thinking?” Yakov swore, shaking his head. “Did you even think at all? Don’t answer that. I know the answer.”

Viktor found a wooden beam, sturdy but carved into an intricate spiral, the way everything in Ast Petyriel was, to lean against and stared back. He crossed his arms in pointed silence. It a practiced means of granting his father’s demands: he hadn’t answered, and yet, because he hadn’t answered, because he stood there in such insouciance, Yakov’s face turned redder, his voice booming like earthquakes, like thunder:

“Viktor, you have obligations —“

“I’m aware. You’ve spent the better part of one hundred and twenty years reminding me of them.”

“This will be easier if you try not to back-talk.”

“This will be _easiest_ if you accept that I have no intention of changing my mind.”

Yakov’s eyes narrowed sharply. “You cannot have me believe that you intend to spend one quarter of the year tending a steadily declining invalid and another season of it mired in grief,” he argued. “That you will willingly plunge the ruling clan of the aes sidhe into mourning every Samhain, that you will bring heirs into a family that suffers this annual breaking, that —“

“I do and I can and I _will_ ,” Viktor shouted suddenly, tired of this tirade, only half-listening to Yakov’s _words._ He’d learned long ago — from Lilia, of all people — to rely on the subtle insights of the family’s bonds instead, to listen to the undercurrents beneath all of Yakov’s gruff and bluster. _He will bully you too much otherwise. He’s had too much practice._ He pushed off from the stone, put both of his hands on his father’s broad shoulders, closed his eyes.

“I tried to love someone the way you wanted once, Yakov —“

“Don’t you dare lay _that_ at my feet, Vitya,” Yakov murmured lowly.

“For once in your life, _listen_ to me.” It wasn’t words that Viktor spoke; he leaned into his thoughts instead: _I tried because I wanted to please you. Who’s at fault doesn’t matter anymore. I tried because I didn’t know enough about myself. I knew who you were. I knew who Lilia was. I knew who I was supposed to be._

 _I’ve spent a century knowing all those things without ever knowing who I am and I’m tired._ “Maybe it’s a coincidence that Yuuri’s first magic was fire and mine was water. Maybe it’s a coincidence that his secondary power is life and mine is fortune. Or maybe we have these things because that’s _who we are_ and maybe I love him because—“

_Because I cannot imagine a better compliment._

“You can think whatever you want about the fact that he’s a halfling,” Viktor murmured lowly, reciting the facts that had just been so furiously thrown into his face. “You can regret the fact that someday we’ll have to talk about who to adopt, if we ever want a family of our own. If you like, you can even wish that he was one of the Princes, or more readily connected to their families, although the healing springs at Hasetsuil are legend and magic too, and I think looking down on them is a mistake. You can think all of those things. But if you tell me one more time that someone who has the strength of character to stare down his imminent death, over and over again, and still come back and _rise …_ if you tell me that is _weakness,_ you and I will never speak again.” Viktor’s blue eyes narrowed and his voice fell even further:

“… If that is what you have to say, then someday you will make your way to the Havens, the way Christophe’s family has, and you will leave this place, and I will not say a word to you while you depart. Your legend will pass wholly unremarked upon, little more than a whisper, and if you think I cannot manage it, if you think I can’t and won’t _erase you from history,_ then you don’t know the son you’ve been raising after all.”

Mountains, Viktor had learned, re-routed rivers for only a time. It was water that turned stone into sand; it was ice that broke through boulders.

“Are you _threatening_ me?” Yakov snorted, both eyebrows raised. He had raised Mosciren from stone and crag; _he_ had put the strength behind the North that had changed the West; _he_ had been the first bearer of the crown after the four families divided, following the first age. “That’s bold, Vitya.”

“… You told me a long time ago, when we first went off to make Christophe abscond that my first mistake had been making empty threats, Father.” Viktor drew back slightly, to look Yakov in the eye, unwavering. “You told me Northerners don’t make threats. We make _promises_.”

_Idiot boy. That’s not something we do to each other. Not in this —_

“Family, I know.” He closed his eyes and raked a hand through silver hair, catching fingers on the tangles not yet combed out, this early in the morning. “… I don’t _want_ to do that. You’re my father, you’re the King, you’ve spent your whole lifetime preparing me for moments like this one, where I have to make difficult, maybe even impossible decisions. I have decided that an answering joy is worth the grief, better than a life lived in the nothingness of the middle, where I’ve spent far too long _away_ from all of our people, _aloof._ Here is where we find out how committed you are to the education you provided: someday you will be gone, and I will make choices that arise from the best of my wisdom _and_ from the depths of my heart, and if that truly isn’t what you wanted, or if your damn pride is worth more to you than the _love of your child,_ then we are at an impasse.”

Yakov said nothing, but the bent of his thoughts was mixed; drifted, periodically, towards Lilia, and the way she’d trained both of their sons in her own curious art: cutting with words instead of swords. “Tch,” he grumbled, the way Yuri would’ve, _sentiment._ Viktor stepped forward, squeezed Yakov’s big shoulders, and then padded backwards, clasping a hand over his heart, performing the perfect Northern bow. “Your majesty,” Viktor said, “can I go back to bed now?”

 _Yakov,_ Lilia’s voice echoed, _I don’t recall giving you permission to wake my whole household with all this shouting —_

_— Woman, you’re enough trouble for four hundred lifetimes, leave me in peace —_

Shutters were thrown open overhead, with an irritable blond staring out: “Are all of you idiots done arguing yet?” He asked, and then pointed towards sunrise. “ _Some of us_ were still trying to sleep.”

Yakov gave one of his long-suffering sighs, and waved Viktor off. “Permission granted.”

 

\- - -

 

Yuuri, sitting alone in Viktor’s bed ran his thumbs across the lines of his palms, listening, in a strange and new way, to the ebb and flow of Viktor’s reactions to whatever conversation he was having with Yakov. For one moment he’d been rattled, almost wounded, and then that glacial, steely resolve was back, cold enough to make him shiver again, and burrow more deeply into the blankets. Then it seemed over and by the time he heard Viktor’s soft footsteps he primarily detected relief.

He looked up as the door closed, and watched Viktor come closer, smiled subtly as he climbed back into bed. “That was rude,” grumbled the prince, who drew Yuuri close once more, tilted his head to press kisses to the plane of his throat. “We’re staying in until lunch.”

Distracting as _that_ was Yuuri wasn’t deterred yet. “What did you tell him?”

 _I told him the next time he insults you that I’ll erase him from history._ Viktor did not say that. Yakov had been right, after all: it was too soon, perhaps, to fully expose Yuuri to the machinations of his family, norms of strength and power set in place for hundreds of years. “… I told him that someday I’m going to be a better King because of you,” he said instead, which was also true, a gentler truth but no weaker for its softness.

“You didn’t need me to come along to be a great King,” mumbled Yuuri, and Viktor’s brow furrowed at the subtle flickers of _doubt_ in his mien, the cares and anxieties he could never quite manage to fully erase. The halfling squirmed to sit up and Viktor followed him, fluid, draping his arms over Yuuri’s shoulders, kissing the edge of one blush-burned ear.

“No,” he agreed mildly. “I needed you to be a kind one.” He pressed his lips to Yuuri’s cheek, to the fine sweep of his blush. “A just one.” Viktor’s hands drifted, and this time one hand curled along the side of the halfling’s face, along the opposite cheek. “It’s important that you understand this, too,” he murmured against the corner of Yuuri’s mouth, smiling slightly at the pick up in Yuuri’s fluttering pulse, terribly pleased by a fresh wave of _want_ between the two of them. “You woke up a sleeping heart,” Viktor hummed, glancing upwards to study Yuuri’s wide eyes, to let himself sink into devotion. “ _You_ did that. Only you.”

Yuuri kissed him then, all feverish heat, and Viktor, grinning against his mouth, fell backwards and made Yuuri follow him down. _We’re staying in until lunch_ had not been a threat: he was going to spend his whole morning swept up in this attraction, intended to relish it.

It had been a promise.

 

\- - -

 

Otabek hadn’t slept well. Lilia’s people had escorted him into the guest wing with the halfling’s parents, and he wasn’t lovesick or sentimental enough to blame _that,_ though falling asleep next to Yuri out in the moonlight and under the stars had its merits. Nor did he blame Yuri for their current separation, or particularly need to stay twined together, the way Viktor and Yuuri did. This was no surprise either: for years now, he’d watched one of his own travel back and forth from A’ve Palmera, _bound_ but still also restless, and at ease with his restlessness, his need to walk moonlit plains.

He’d had no other expectations, really.

Perhaps it had been the room itself, too ornate, too comfortable, too boxed in. He’d felt the same way in Mosciren, from time to time, trapped amidst tapestries that belonged to the aes sidhe, serving under their King for a time while he tried to study, tried to learn, tried to find a way to make the future look a little differently than the past. Then the morning’s rumble of stone had all but announced the King’s arrival and he’d gotten out of his bed and purposefully avoided them all, picking up his staff and then walking to the forum alone along the empty high street, for practice.

It wouldn’t do to let the soft bed, with its silk sheets, the luxury and sheen of this place, the way it imposed a perfect natural order, bleed into him somehow. Change him.

Even that was a lie, though. Yuri’s heartbeat was smooth and steady in the distance of his thoughts. _You’re changing already._

He pretended not to notice the King, when Yakov arrived, preoccupied with the twist and flow of the staff.

“… You know what I don’t understand,” Yakov murmured slowly, deliberately. “I’ve heard the whole story. Nights out in the desert bleeding out magic from a dragon’s wound and somehow Vitya’s still here.”

“Your majesty.” He turned and clasped a hand over his chest and did not bow. It irritated Yakov, but it was an irritation he’d learned to live with in exchange for talent. The ban side would not bow to the aes sidhe ever again. They’d been vanquished enough. “You have your other son to thank for that.”

“Ah, yes. I thought of that.” Yakov watched as Otabek’s quarterstaff made another fluid sweep, as he proceeded swiftly into the next phase of his practice, unwilling to stand at attention for long. “I thought: perhaps Georgi and Mila helped him, but then they, too … Those wounds are a void, who held them out from it, and so on.”

They were men of actions, not words. Otabek sighed to himself, and turned back around, leaning his weight on the staff. “Do you have something you’d like to ask me?”

“It was you, holding Yura.” A ban side. They knew the darkness well, were too acquainted with the things that had once walked in the night.

There was no point in lying. The solution was plain. Besides, he’d never do Yuri the injustice of the denial, had known from the moment he’d beheld the unicorn for the first time that there was no real danger in handing Yura his power. “Yes.”

One corner of Yakov’s right eye twitched, and then he drew in a big breath. What he _shouted_ was this:

**“LILIA.”**

What he _thought_ was something different, directed at his entire stupid family, although judging by the current state of Viktor’s mind he wasn’t going to pay them a single bit of attention:

_Yura. Get down to the forum at once._

Yuri, who’d tried to go back to sleep, glad to finally be back _in his own house, in his own room,_ sat up suddenly with a fierce scowl and narrowed eyes. “Shit.”

 

_\- - -_

 

When he got to the forum Yakov was waiting, heavy arms crossed while Otabek stood nearby, expression neutral and heartbeat elevated from exercise. Yuri spared a moment to glance that way, at the mess of the Ranger’s hair and the cooling sweat on his brow; the quarterstaff, currently going unused. One corner of his mouth twitched with the temptation of a smile, quickly cut short by the reminder of the fact that he’d been summoned here, _and how._ “You called?”

Yakov merely pointed in the banshee’s direction, little more than a jab of one thumb. “Tell me at once, Yura. Are you bonded to the banshee?”

 _The banshee._ Something about the way it was said set Yuri’s teeth on edge, though it was a turn of phrase that wouldn’t have phased him a few months ago, before he’d met Otabek at all, and begun collecting a different set of ideas, ones that suggested that nothing was one hundred percent black or white, love or war … He looked from Yakov to Beka now, schooled his expression into an imitation of the aloof neutrality Viktor was so good at assuming, from time to time. “Partially.”

“Ridiculous,” said Yakov, who let himself call, mentally, for Lilia again. She had nothing kind to say about the matter:

_You blustering fool, I’m not your servant._

_Our son is bonded to a banshee, witch-woman._

Yakov swore he detected the mental edition of an eye-roll, something Yura had no doubt inherited from the woman who was the source of all of his woes. “And do you have any intention of breaking that bond?”

Yuri gave the question its due consideration without looking back at his father. Vaux Romandith had settled something like an intent between the two of them and yet he wasn’t particularly eager to rush to the place Viktor was, ready to hand over heart and soul and mind.

It didn’t mean he wanted Beka kissing someone _else_. He’d been too fond of that predatory smile, of the glittering dark in Otabek’s eyes, of the strength and subtle ferocity with which their lips had met.

“Not currently,” he said, which was the truth, and Beka offered the ghost of a smirk in return. Viktor had already promised his halfling forever, over and over again, and Yuri felt more inclined to take his life a day at a time; imagined Otabek still present _tomorrow_ but was more interested in the reality of him _today._

Yakov pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering into his open palm. “I send you away for a few months and one son comes back wanting to marry a halfling, and the other one’s making eyes at a banshee …”

“His name,” said Yuri, citrine eyes narrow and sharp, “is _Otabek.”_

“I know his bloody name,” Yakov snapped back. “For gods’ sake, I _hired_ him.” His eyes flashed in Otabek’s direction, ominous, as though he considered the current events a breach of some unspoken contract; something about _not seducing my sons —_

“You’re right,” Otabek murmured carelessly. “I should have let them both die.”

“That is treachery.”

“ _No,”_ said the Ranger Captain, the ban side noble, and the King’s guard, all at once; Otabek’s chin lifted and his eyes narrowed: “It was duty and I’ve delivered it. You solved the puzzle yourself, _your majesty,_ will you deny it?”

“Perhaps you led them into danger yourself —“

“Father, that is _ridiculous._ ”

“Yes, and then brought them here.” Otabek snorted. “I confess. Your tactical mind is losing its edge in its twilight years —”

“I will **not** be insulted by a _banshee_.”

“Then be insulted by a Queen instead,” Lilia said from the doorway, her lips drawn into a deep frown. “What is the meaning of this,” she demanded, and when Yakov started to speak the Queen held up a hand glowing green in warning. _Not in my house, Yakov._ “Yura. Explain yourself.”

Yuri turned and looked at his mother for a long time, irritable, silent, and then his expression softened by degrees. “In Shen-Osheth the Westerners and Southrons told Vitya about how dangerous the Sunset Road had become, and he decided we could clear it. We fought revenants, wraiths, and a dark dragon came last, and it was after me, but … but …” Rather than say the words, he thought them: _Vitya jumped in the way._ “I don’t know what it did, but Otabek called for help, and then … I used my magic to try to keep Vitya stable, and Beka …” He looked from Lilia to Otabek, took in the steady, stoic planes of the ban side’s face. The ranger did not smile, but he tilted his head just slightly, and he held Yuri’s gaze without once wavering. “Beka held _me_.”

“I see.”

“This is your fault,” Yakov interrupted, looking at Lilia. “Too many nonsense stories about love, and now I have sons with heads full of nonsense, too.”

“I seem to recall you changed the world for love once,” Lilia murmured archly.

“Look what good that seems to have done.”

“Twin capitals of the North, the fealty of three other noble clans, two sons who are the envy of the whole world for their talent, who will both someday be the stuff of legend …”

Yakov appeared unconvinced by this argument, fixing his Queen with a simmering glare. “One son who is going to shatter himself annually and another intent on bringing an enemy into our household,” he reminded Lilia, who shrugged in return and looked at Otabek instead:

“You understand that if harm comes to him because of you there is no place on this earth where you will be able to hide from me, correct?”

He’d always heard such stories of the witch of the North. Beka was beginning to take a shine to this woman. On this point the two of them were in perfect alignment, like passing planets, both miracle and mystery at the same time. He nearly smiled. “Oh, yes,” he agreed. “That part is _perfectly clear._ ”

“See?”

“He isn’t _an enemy,_ ” Yuri muttered, tired of standing by and listening to the argument about him pass by without including him. Yakov and Lilia both turned to regard him with blank stares. “We took war to the ban side,” he said sharply, and for the first time Otabek’s expression registered subtle surprise, his gaze sharpening and softening at the same time: the focus of it intent on the younger Prince, with a slight smile that this time he did not possess the art to entirely hide. “ _We_ were the enemies. _We_ were the ones who marched through the world to do harm.”

“A war is always fought on at least two sides, Yura.”

“I’m telling you to relax. If he was going to kill me in my sleep he’s had plenty of opportunity already.”

“Is that so?” Yakov’s voice took on an arch edge. “… How _marvelously_ encouraging.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have some thoughts about one of viktor's lines in this chapter that i'm going to be taking over to tumblr because it's a little meta; you'll be able to find that post in maybe like 15 minutes or so @ https://handsingsweapon.tumblr.com/ and after a few days to let folks read this, i'll link it back here ♡


	17. none of us is, or else we all are

 

_Two weeks after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

Ast Petyriel settled into an uneasy truce, forged largely by Lilia’s unwillingness to tolerate Yakov in her house for a period longer than a handful of days, and an understanding that _everyone_ would travel up the last pass of the King’s Road after the autumn equinox. Viktor seemed largely unconcerned by the possibility of a second confrontation with his father, though Yuri seemed to be gearing up for one, more irritable than usual and more ready to jump to Otabek’s defense at the most innocuous slight. Yuuri was certain the younger brother hadn’t even noticed his change in habits, and it reminded him almost of the way Yuri had behaved towards him at Vaux Romandith, with a fierce protectiveness that was admirable once he learned to see beyond its abrasiveness.

Lazy, early Autumn days passed: mornings in which he usually woke up to find Viktor watching him, instead of the other way around. Viktor took him for leisurely walks through the surrounding forest, swapping stories about their childhoods that slowly transformed the Prince further, made him more real, something Yuuri felt less guilty about when he touched. Young Viktor had been a handful, from the sound of it, too mischievous for stony Yakov and sometimes quietly encouraged to be wily by the _witchy woman_ (Yakov’s words) who’d raised him. Slowly the pressure of responsibility had forged him into something else, but Yuuri saw the dart and dash of the elven child Viktor had been once in the handsome edges of his smirk and the playful, predatory glint his eyes took on sometimes.

Alone together like this, Vitya allowed the stag to walk alongside them, corporeal, and even Yuuri let the phoenix out (grown as it was now, with feathers that were less of a brilliant scarlet and approaching a deep crimson) to fly overhead without worrying about anyone noticing, anyone asking questions, anyone _talking._

The afternoons got busy, an artifice he didn’t realize was Viktor’s doing until a few days in: Lilia, inviting him to sit on discussions in the forum, or Mila taking him shopping. Inevitably Viktor didn’t come along, insisting he’d be in the library, a separation Yuuri tolerated only until the Prince began to radiate despondence over his lack of progress looking through the ancient texts, his inability to find a neat solution, a cure.

After a week of _that_ he moved into the library, too. “This involves me,” Yuuri said, when Viktor looked at him, _questioning_ and _unsure._ “I should shoulder some of the work.”

He was starting to get tired earlier, too; it was always Viktor who woke him up from a doze, curled up into one of the library’s chaises with a book or hunched over an unrolled scroll.

 

\- - -

 

_Three weeks after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

“You seem disapproving,” Otabek noted idly, having chanced by Seung-gil as he sat in an alcove overlooking the high street, watching the afternoon ritual of the Prince leading the Easterling into the library.

The reaper glanced up, expressionless. “He’s convinced he can change it.”

“You’re convinced he can’t,” Otabek countered, albeit without real disagreement. He chose a spot on the wall to lean against, one free of the tapestries and paintings Lilia seemed to have nearly everywhere. Growing up amongst the ban side he’d always heard the elven queen referred to as _the weaver_ and now he was beginning to understand why.

“Even if he could, do you really think it would be wise?” Seung-gil’s dark, flat gaze became pointed, and Otabek gave the question the consideration it was due. He knew the place it came from. The aes sidhe of the first age had been much too eager to impose their will on the world; had long over-reached its development. They had all paid the price.

“I suppose it depends,” Otabek admitted. “… on the price.” _You’re the reaper,_ he thought, though this went unsaid. _You should know._

“Hard to know until it happens. _If_ it can even happen. I’ve never heard of it.” Seung-gil shrugged and glanced back out the intricate window, awash in many colors. The High Prince and his lover were gone. “What I do know is this: the phoenix before him had a family, too, and this cycle was part of their life together, the way the wheel is, the way the cougar thanks the rabbit and the grass thanks the cougar.”

“The last phoenix had a mate? Your mother told you this?”

“…Mm. His having a family is the only reason she spent most of the years back in the ranges at all.”

“So what happened to them?”

Seung-gil sighed heavily, and glanced around surreptitiously, wary of being overheard. “Let’s go for a ride,” he said instead, and summoned the three headed dog to his side, heading for the door. The both of them would feel more comfortable outside, anyway; underneath an open sky, darting between the understanding trees.

Later he explained the brutal math of all of it: “Eventually what it comes down to is this, Otabek. Either _everyone_ lives forever, or _nobody_ does.” Long ago his mother’s phoenix had taken a wife, a Southron halflingwho’d born him a daughter, and for centuries his magic had extended her life, had made his daughter hale and healthy. Then his child had married, and her children had married, and there were grandchildren and cousins and nephews to manage, youth who grew up and then became old men whose spouses tried to make the impossible journey past the havens, or who passed.

“For a long time, that made it easier for my mother. She says family makes the mantle of it more bearable, makes them braver, gives them strength to hold off illness for longer in the fall … Growing up we spent nine whole months in the ranges, and just three in the South …”

“Until?”

“Until one day his wife told him that she thought perhaps it was best not to hold on to life for so long,” Seung-gil murmured. “ _Maybe we come back,_ she told him, _maybe we come back after death somehow and I could fall in love with you a second time, like we were new again._ ”

“So they decided to die.”

Seung-gil nodded. “They chose. The old man ceded the phoenix to Yuuri, and mother ceded the hounds to me, and …”

 _Ceded._ Otabek’s eyes widened somewhat. “Seung-gil…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” chided the other banshee, suddenly, unwilling to accept condolences _now,_ not when he’d been prepared for this for decades. His father had accepted this truth, had mourned, and then had resumed his patrols with the Rangers, a duty he would continue until he, too, went beyond the veil and traveled into the mystery beyond that all of the ban side sensed but could not fully understand. “This is the way of things,” he said instead.

“The sun rises. It also sets. Real _life_ has both. Real life is balance.”

 

\- - -

 

_Four weeks after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

Ast Petyriel did not have Hasetsuil’s hot springs, but it did have stone pools that could be filled and then carefully heated by a whole system of whirring wheels and stoked fires that suggested Yakov’s influence and Viktor’s — only the King could have designed something so intricate, but only Vitya would have wanted the pools to work in this way in the first place, and with such specificity: one cool, one warm, one steaming hot the way home was, where the healing waters were. Viktor, chronically fond of bathing, who washed his long hair with something that smelled a little bit like lavender and whose skin always smelled like honey: Yuuri had no doubt in his mind that he’d seen the possibilities and then helped Yakov engineer Lilia’s house to precisely _this_ state.

Viktor preferred the cool pool, the largest of the three, but settled for warmth when Yuuri’s fever got the best of him; had picked the halfling up and then hesitated for a moment, walking over to the bath. _He’s lost weight._ Travel had hardened Yuuri’s muscles compared to the softness that he recalled on the Ardor, and now he had an impression of a waning that he hadn’t noticed until _just now,_ perhaps because in every evening’s cradle the changes were too subtle to catch by comparison.

“Viktor?”

“It’s nothing,” he said, and moved again into the warmed waters, settling Yuuri against his chest. “My mother’s started weaving something new,” he added, because he’d begun to learn that Yuuri was fond of these little stories, a habit they’d begun to build in the morning walks, careful and slow, through the Petyriel woods. “She took everything out of the forum which means she’s trying to keep it a secret …” Trying and _succeeding_. He’d determined nothing from her thoughts. When Lilia decided to do something, she did it, and this, whatever it was, would likely remain hidden until she felt ready to unveil it. He wiggled his fingers, summoning a little bit of water to dribble across Yuuri’s shoulders, watching as it pooled in his collarbones and then fell back down his chest. This time, when Yuuri shivered, it wasn’t from the fever. “Should we make guesses?”

“She likes tapestries, you said?”

“Mm. She made the one in my room, when I was a child.”

“I like that one,” Yuuri murmured, tilting his head back onto Viktor’s shoulder to attempt to peer back up at the prince. In Viktor’s room, on its longest wall, hung a long mural: on one side, the sun rose over the ocean, where waves crashed into rocky crags on the shore, and as the sea progressed the sky became darker, stormy. In the midst of this blackness was a stylized elf figure, white-haired, bow drawn. At the far right side he shot for the moon, and instead of rain, the stars fell.

 _What does it mean,_ he nearly asked, seized up by a fit of coughing that came and went. Yuuri wiped at his mouth, about to repeat the question, when Viktor snatched his hand, looking at the small spatter of red on the back with a plunge of feelings that Yuuri felt as if they were his own.

_Oh._

“… You’re really dying,” Viktor whispered, painfully still and terribly fragile, and Yuuri bowed his head for a moment, trying to find his place in the midst of all of that hurt.

“Yes,” he said softly, because it was coming, that death, and before Viktor had ever scoured the library, Lilia had, and before Lilia there had been Seung-gil and centuries of this; the phoenix and the reaper. What he wanted was to spare Viktor all of it, the pain of parting, the witnessing of such an inelegant decline, the —

“Stop.” Viktor’s arms tightened around him, an instinctive reaction to that protectiveness, that concern. “You have to go through all this and you’re trying to save _me_?”

“I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“I’m going to be hurt,” Viktor replied, sure as rainfall. Still, he turned them, tugged on Yuuri’s shoulder and then brushed his chin, leaned forward to capture the kiss that had a subtly coppery tang, death’s first blood.

He had lectured his father about joy, thought now about that last step of the bond between them.

Was it too much, too soon?

“I’m going to be hurt,” he repeated again, like a mantra, a prayer, “and it will have been worth it.”

“Vitya —“ Yuuri’s _feelings_ were such a new piece of insight and so, so complicated: they shifted, the way tongues of flame did, and changed colors and tones from heated reds to purples. Viktor felt himself more straightforward: desperate, certainly, but desperate in love as much as he was in despair. Yuuri felt the entire gamut; there was love, of course, Viktor _cherished_ that; but his cares seemed to shift, leapt from one target to the next, flammable and never fully extinguished.

“Over and over again, if I have to,” he reminded Yuuri then, words they’d spoken to each other in an oasis before he’d known just how true they were. “I will do this for decades. For centuries. And I will hate it every time but I am made of strong enough stuff to survive it and choose again _._ Will you?”

Sometimes that love of Yuuri’s flickered up like a bonfire and all Viktor could do was sit in awe of it. Yuuri whose feverish fingers crept up his face now, and tangled into his hair, who kissed him so hard this time that their teeth clicked.

_Yes._

Handfasting, Viktor thought. He’d have to ask Lilia about handfasting.

Yakov would have to learn to live with it.

 

\- - -

 

_Five weeks after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

They gathered outside the great gates of Ast Petyriel to prepare to leave for Mosciren; the Northerners and Seung-gil rallying the horses while Otabek summoned his wyvern guardian into being. Yuuri’s family stood under the wingspan of the eagles, getting ready for flight, and Viktor went to speak to the ranger captain as they prepared to all say their farewells.

“… Tell me you’ll bear him if he gets too tired to fly,” he murmured quietly, glancing back at Yuuri, who seemed preoccupied by some sort of game with Vicchan. Viktor didn’t _like_ this, the separation of travel, but even he could admit that it would be faster and less arduous for the Easterlings to take their birds Northwards without crossing the pass on foot. Meanwhile he and the Northerners would lead Seung-gil up to Mosciren, accustomed to the mountain route and its sometimes treacherous ways.

Otabek inclined his head, all subtle acquiescence. “Of course,” he said, simple as that, and Viktor exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Take care,” he reminded the ranger with a wry smile, glancing sidelong as Yuri led his own horse out into the clearing. _Beka,_ Yuri called him, whenever he thought nobody was paying attention. Beka his someday brother. “Now you’re carrying _two_ things that are precious to me.”

Otabek said nothing but his gaze softened somewhat and even he couldn’t quite stop a subtle smile. Yuri stepped forward towards them both, reaching up to touch the wyvern’s giant, dark snout.

“… It’s still amazing,” said the blonde, and he glanced over at Otabek, with an uncharacteristically soft smile. “Will you tell me how you do it, someday?”

“That’s the problem with you high elves,” Otabek replied, with a gleam in his eyes that suggested he was at least partially teasing. The ranger leaned over, and deposited a rare, public kiss atop Yuri’s forehead, and then sprang up onto the wyvern’s back. In spite of his words his gaze was fond:

“You always want to _do,_ you have to learn how to _be.”_

Four eagles and a wyvern took off into the brilliance of a blue sky, leaving a circle of horses and two brothers standing side by side below: Yuri and Viktor, who stood there in stillness and a strange sort of yearning for a moment and a moment only before they, too, leapt up onto horseback and darted up for the North, united in at least one thought:

_The sooner to Mosciren the better._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will be glorious. the chapter after that, you'll all put curses on my house and i'll cry into a whole bottle of wine and go write for h&wya or rules or something.


	18. this word is far too short for us

_Five weeks, five days after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age_

A group of horses rode under Mosciren’s high, imposing gates, two ancient slabs of stone that seemed to be carved out of the mantle of the mountain itself. The city gleamed pale and silver under the moonlight, already half-asleep. Yet as the riders climbed steadily up the city’s steep, cobblestone roads and came to a stop at the gates of the alcazar, ironworks that barred entry to the palace, they began to yawn open — seemingly in expectation of their arrival. There, behind the open gates, a cluster of figures stood waiting in a semi-circle, and in spite of his weariness, having decided to press on long into the night for the last stretch of the pass, the High Prince dismounted in a swift leap to charge towards one of the lot; a young halfling, leaning some of his weight on his sister’s shoulder, trying and failing to blink away exhaustion.

Yuuri, too, darted forward into this collision of figures, found himself swept under the warmth of Viktor’s cloak, twisted up into his arms. Behind them, Mila dismounted and gathered the lead of Viktor’s horse, and looked back at Yuri, holding a hand out. Caught watching his brother and his intended, Yuri let his eyes narrow, but Mila’s words caught him off guard, prevented the eye roll he’d had prepared for _just this exact situation._ “You too,” she said, and left the rest of the suggestion unspoken. _Go find him._

Yuri found, for once, that no retort was easily, readily available. Instead he dismounted slowly, and handed off the reins. Beka was around here somewhere, and had no doubt been putting up with Yakov for days. Mila’s suggestion wasn’t a bad one. Viktor glanced up only briefly as he passed by, a hand lifted in half-farewell, and Yuri ignored the way Vitya’s subtle half-smile seemed to follow him, _knowing._

_Go kiss your halfling in private, idiot._

_Is that what you’re off to go do?_

_Tch._

“Cold?” Viktor asked, sweeping Yuuri closer, because he was already certain of the answer, mystery though it was: awash in this fondness that Yuuri had for him, and the relief of seeing him again, he was nearly sure he’d never be cold again a day in his life.

And Yuuri hadn’t been cold for months; had always felt warm, almost feverishly so, _except_ for this. Now he wavered, volatile as wildfire, crashing between burning and ice. “A little,” Yuuri admitted, cheek turned against his tunic, and Vitya leaned down to kiss his forehead, to sweep his fingers through tousled, dark curls.

“Let’s go inside.”

Though Georgi had taken rear guard for the entire duration of their travels, it was Seung-gil and Lilia who passed through the gates last, each of them watching the pair of brothers, intent, serious.

Both for different reasons.

 

\- - -

 

_Six weeks after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age: Morning_

Jean-Jacques drew his horse up to a halt, looking up the last part of the King’s Road to measure the final half-mile that would lead them into Mosciren. The city’s famous gates loomed in the distance, and he glanced sidelong at Isabella as she rode closer, and laid a hand on his shoulder, conveying everything without saying _anything_ at all.

“Wow,” Kenjirou offered, giving a brief whistle as he pulled alongside. Even Yuuko, who’d been to Mosciren before, during her trip on the wheel, lifted a hand to gaze up at the impressive sight.

Christophe pretended like he, too, wasn’t phased, did what he could to dispel Jean-Jacque’s unease without relying on his magic to do so. “Well,” he quipped, spurring his horse onwards, “Whatever else anyone has to say about Yakov, there’s no denying the man knows how to make a statement.”

How many years had it been since he’d last traveled this path? Back then he’d admired Mosciren for what it was; an architectural marvel, a work of genius slung up into the mountain, an unconquerable fortress crawling up the hillside. All over were the signatures of Yakov’s work; the arches that nobody but a stone-mage could sculpt, glittering with ores that must’ve followed his command.

_Too long. It’s been too long._

Now he saw it differently, from the viewpoint of the vanquished, and it wouldn’t do to disrupt Jean-Jacques fragile hope that someday he might be able to stand on equal footing with the family he’d so long despised, recognized as a leader in his own right.

“Do you _ever_ take anything seriously?”

“I take everything seriously,” Christophe replied, humming subtly. He let his thoughts drift to the plains, smiled to himself, reassured by a distant heartbeat that was all _his_ , whatever else Yakov tried to rule. “But that’s no reason to not have fun along the way. Come on, I’d love to get cleaned up before the bear brings us in for a good shouting at.”

_“Us?”_

“You’re right. Mostly me. Probably.” It was not especially reassuring.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” said Kenjirou cheerfully, which wasn’t reassuring at all.

In the end, _getting cleaned up_ had been a wish that went unfulfilled: the summons came for them almost as soon as they rode through the gates. “No rest for the weary,” Christophe joked, and he pointedly ignored his own familiarity with the alcazar as they retraced the steps he’d once been able to make freely, as a welcome guest, burdened with nothing other than _expectation._

Even that had proved far too much back when he’d been young and stupid.

Led through the archways into the council chambers, Christophe stopped at the threshold and performed the bow he hadn’t needed to make in over a century, isolated at the oasis, and chose to ignore the fact that it wasn’t _just_ Jean-Jacques who burned with resentment for it. He’d pretended to be unaffected for decades, a technique which had served him well, and so he leaned into that habit, moved by rote. Viktor and Yuri stood nearby; the real surprise was Lilia, watching him with those eyes that always seemed to _know_ everything.

“Your majesties,” he said, and began to summon his python familiar for reassurance alone until a slight tilt of Viktor’s head seemed to suggest that wasn’t the best of ideas. Yakov hadn’t moved, fixing the entire group of Western travelers with a stern glare.

“Steward,” said Lilia, instead, which was something, though for the life of him Christophe couldn’t figure out if it was a compliment or an insult. Yakov snorted, and looked at Viktor, jerking his chin in Jean-Jacques’ direction.

“Is this him?”

“Yes.”

“Go on, Vitya.” Yakov’s voice was hard, stern. “Give us your recommendation.”

“Jean-Jacques is the son of the stewards of Vaux Romandith, who have been primarily responsible for managing the affairs of the Western Kingdom in the absence of its heir. Their son is ideally placed to continue that work, and young enough that he never swore fealty to Christophe and was therefore never complicit in any …” Viktor paused, considering his words carefully, “… insults to the crown.”

Christophe glanced sidelong at Jean-Jacques, who folded his arms, mouth drawn into a thin line of displeasure. _We talked about this, Jean-Jacques._ They’d spoken about it at length, in fact, riding up the King’s road from Vaux Romandith. Christophe had one simple plan for how to survive this precise moment: _Just shut up and let Vitya and I do most of the talking._

“… Furthermore,” Viktor continued, “In spite of an ill-advised legacy of hostility between our two courts, for which I am principally to blame …” That was a touch unexpected; Yakov didn’t seem to believe it but Christophe knew Viktor wasn’t particularly in the habit of saying things he didn’t mean. “ … he rode to the border to ensure our passage across the sunset road was completed safely, and in the short time I’ve had to observe him I’ve become convinced that he isn’t lacking in courage, that he genuinely wishes to see his people prosper, and that he holds honor in high esteem.”

Well. They had been doing so well. Yakov’s feelings sharpened on the last phrase and Christophe nearly winced. “Does he?” Yakov asked, and turned to look towards Jean-Jacques. “Is that true, boy?”

“Jean-Jacques.” _Here we go._ Christophe glanced at the young elf Viktor had seen fit to crown, eyes narrowing sharply in swift warning. It was better, generally speaking, to _not_ bother with correcting Yakov. He’d learned that the hardest way, and now here Jean-Jacques was, trying to recover from that original mistake. _Don’t be proud, you idiot._

“Do you hold honor in high esteem?”

“I do.”

Christophe saw the trap coming, frowned deeply, and said nothing. “Is it honorable to deny your King, do you think?”

Jean-Jacques blinked, realizing the situation he’d walked into, and he looked between Yakov and Viktor; the former waiting with a subtle, expectant smile; the latter’s expression schooled into neutrality, though a certain worry hung in his eyes. Perhaps tellingly, they all turned to look at Christophe.

“Only when the King himself is dishonorable,” Jean-Jacques replied, because he couldn’t _not_ tell the truth. Christophe opened his mouth to speak, torn between the urge to try to soothe the remark over somehow and to simply plant his face in his hands because _they’d had a plan for this,_ and that plan had not involved Jean-Jacques simply doing things his own way.

It didn’t matter.

“Insolence!” Thundered Yakov, whose words bounced off of the stone walls and shook them, ominously. “The Southrons throw tradition in the face of the winds and even _they_ have a better sense of etiquette and place.”

“Father —“

“Shut up, Vitya. Your judgment is presently _highly_ _suspect._ ” Viktor’s eyes narrowed sharply and he must’ve taken the argument elsewhere, because Yuri had to reach out to pat his arm. “It’s been a century and the West still hasn’t learned to respect the order that’s been in place for a _thousand years_ —“

Lilia coughed into one hand, her expression unchanged. “What the King is saying,” she murmured coolly, “albeit rather poorly, as is his wont —“

“Woman, you are in _my house_ —“

“— is that you will never be acceptable to him without a promise of fealty.”

“Great,” cheered Christophe, putting up a smile that even he thought felt forced. “Just what we came here to do. Go ahead, Jean-Jacques.” _Get it over with._

“I won’t swear fealty to him,” said Jean-Jacques, and Christophe finally gave into that original urge, immediately dropped his forehead into a waiting palm. _We talked about this. We did._ He missed what Jean-Jacques did next, pointing to a startled Viktor.

“… but I will promise it to your son.”

Christophe looked up just in time to catch the joy that was Viktor’s face, the rare expression he showed when taken completely and utterly by surprise. “Sorry, _what_?”

“Good,” Lilia decided, before Yakov could speak. “That settles it.”

“You don’t rule in this house,” Yakov interrupted, only to be stopped by Lilia turning to fix him with a cold stare and a single, perfectly raised eyebrow:

“Don’t I?”

 

\- - -

 

Later, Viktor cornered Jean-Jacques on the walk back to the guest quarters, ignoring Christophe as he strolled along behind. “You hated me when we met,” he recalled pointedly. “ _Insulted_ me, if memory serves…”

“You’ve changed,” Jean-Jacques replied, without the same assertiveness he’d shown standing in front of the King just a short while before. “You went and fetched Christophe, you reinstalled order, you … Nobody who looks at someone the way you look at that halfling could be intentionally cruel.”

“That’s dangerous thinking,” Christophe murmured, because, after all, Lilia and Yakov had loved each other once. Actually, as he could see plainly, even amidst the collision of their two egos, too big and too ancient for this earth now: they still did.

“I could be worse,” Viktor said, certain of it. He had the potential. Christophe knew that. “I could be selfish.”

“Maybe.” Jean-Jacques shrugged. “But not if you want _him_ to keep looking at you the way that _he_ does.”

 

\- - -

 

_Six weeks after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age: Mid-Morning_

Later, long after the Westerners had been escorted to the guest wing of the palace and after Yuri made the wise decision to accompany their father on a hunt while he cooled off, mother and son strolled through the castle together. “Are you sure about this, Vitya?”

“I am.”

“He will want a spectacle.”

“I know,” Viktor murmured, with a slight, subtle smile. “But Yuuri won’t.”

_Do I have your permission, Mother?_

“You have always had my permission.” Lilia didn’t smile but her gaze was softer, somehow, when she turned to look at Viktor, her son, the boy who was someday going to be a King to rival all of the ancients. Swept into a sudden hug by her son, she slowly twined her long, graceful arms around his shoulders. “But tell your father yourself. I’ve done you enough favors for one morning.”

 

\- - -

 

_Six weeks after Lughnasadh, 1017 II Age: Mid-Day_

“Prince Viktor?” Hiroko looked surprised to see him standing there, outside the guest suite that had been arranged for her family. “Yuuri isn’t here; Mila came by this morning, I think —“

“I know.” Viktor had been the author of that diversion; something to keep Yuuri’s spirits up while he sat in the throne room and listened to Yakov shout while they re-established the rights of the new Prince of the West. “… I was looking for you, actually.” He glanced over her shoulder, saw Mari and Toshiya sitting in the background on one of the chaises, playing some sort of card game. “All of you.”

So accustomed to _helping_ , so used to their years of service at Hasetsuil, nearly all of the Katsuki clan sprang into action:

Hiroko: “What is it?”

“How can we help?” Toshiya.

Mari’s reaction was a little less warm; she didn’t stand, the way her father had, and her brow furrowed in worry, in care. “Is this about Yuuri?”

“Yes.” Nearly everything was about Yuuri, now. Yuuri whose mere existence now permeated his life, saturated his thoughts. “But it’s not like that. May I come in?”

Hiroko held the door open and Viktor glanced around the suite. It was probably best to sit, but he felt compelled by nervous energy not to do so; only _just_ resisted the urge to pace. “It occurred to me that I’ve been … I’ve been …” Wildly and terribly in love at the same time,panicked by impending winter. Not thinking clearly.

He still wasn’t thinking clearly. That was what love did; it came in and moved everything around and sometimes he only still recognized himself because he was more fully _himself_ than he’d been in years. As though the past decades had been like looking at some stylized, flat version of Viktor, the kind that made up Lilia’s tapestries, and now things were becoming real again for the first time. “Your son is amazing,” he said, changing tactics, and watched as Hiroko and Toshiya glanced between each other and shared a fond smile. “Your son is amazing and I had you summoned to Ast Petyriel without thinking, and you just _accepted me_ and I never once asked —“

“Asked?” Mari asked, blinking slowly at this wonder that was the High Prince, looking as though he might sometime soon burst apart at the seams.

“Hiroko, Toshiya.” Viktor took in a deep breath, looked between Yuuri’s parents, steadied himself. “May I court your son?”

Hiroko gave out a short, warm laugh, and then covered her mouth, because the appearance of laughing _at_ the Prince was no doubt the worst sort of etiquette breach, even if she’d really been laughing _with_ him. It was Toshiya who stepped forward and clapped him on the shoulder. “Of course.”

“Great,” Viktor cheered, and took a breath again. “Great,” he echoed, and then he reached up and touched Toshiya’s hand, patting it slowly. “That’s great,” he repeated uselessly. Then, because he’d been charging headlong into this without restraint he asked the question he’d really come here to ask:

“May I handfast him?”

Both parents blinked at him and Mari finally stood up, shaking her head. “You really love him, don’t you?”

“Madly,” Viktor assured her, and he reached out, taking Mari’s hands in his own. _Please._ “May I?”

 

\- - -

 

On his tour of the castle with Mila, Yuuri stopped suddenly, and turned his head to look back towards the Keep. “Yuuri?” She asked gently, flashing a curious, crooked smile. It was playful, electric. Someday someone was going to see that smile, the way Yuuri had seen Viktor on the Ardor, and _plunge._

Yuuri laid a hand over his heart, listening to something, or perhaps, more aptly, _feeling_ the things that she could not. “I need to find Vitya,” he murmured, and then he tilted his head with a soft and wondrous smile, like he’d been presented with a puzzle. “Vitya _and_ my family.”

Mila had long since stopped questioning these flashes of insight that could flicker across people’s bonds. Instead she offered an understanding nod. “This way, then.”

He resisted the urge to run; it was the wrong season for it, and instead walked at a quick pace, faster than they’d gone all morning. Every so often his head spun with the effort of it, but Yuuri refused to let dizziness get the better of him, not with weeks to go to Samhain, and so he reached out to steady himself on the wall periodically, blinked away the world’s threatening tilt. When they arrived back at the guest quarters, Yuuri helped himself back inside his family suite, leaving Mila outside with a short, breathless hum of thanks. He froze as he stepped over the threshold, surprised to see Viktor hugging his sister with an unbridled grin, though Viktor’s gaze snapped to him immediately.

It was the sort of look that Yuuri never knew what to do with, so completely _adored,_ so utterly _cared for._ Viktor carried whole oceans in his gaze; there was no containing them, no putting _that_ into something neat and small and easier to hold onto.

It took his breath away every time.

“Yuuri,” Viktor murmured, and Yuuri’s breath caught in his throat as Viktor stepped forward, cupped his face in both of his hands, stroking his thumbs fondly over the sweep of Yuuri’s blush, unusually brilliant against the uncharacteristic pale of his cheeks. “Yuuri,” he whispered, and leaned forward, let his lips brush the edge of Yuuri’s ear.

A lifetime of simply listening to Viktor say his name might have been a life well spent, Yuuri thought, and he was so distracted by this that he nearly missed what came next:

“Yuuri,” Viktor repeated, softly, just for him: _“Marry me.”_

Viktor was as _crazy_ as the seas, too; shifting and changing: never the same one day to the next and yet the same, the same, the same.

“Yuuri?”

He’d forgotten to speak, forgotten to breathe. “Y-yes,” Yuuri said, and then it was a struggle to repeat this against Viktor’s mouth or from within the crush of his family, though he understood now, that surging of warmth and happiness he’d felt from outside. It radiated through him in waves, warm and bracing as tongues of flame.

_Yes. Yes. Yes._

He broke away to breathe, leaning into the Prince’s strength, held up on his feet by the anchors of Viktor’s arms. _You’ll break him,_ warned a voice that sounded like Yuuri’s own, the one he’d been listening for far too long. _You’ll ruin him when you go._

How could someone not love the sea, though?

_Please, just let me have this._

 

\- - -

 

_Mabon (Autumn Equinox), 1017 II Age_

It was Viktor who woke in the early light of the morning, who gently shook Yuuri awake, reminded him. Viktor who brought Yuuri to the Katsuki clan, and then left in search of his brother, his father.

It was Lilia who came knocking, who’d left a package in their care without an explanation ( _“something I’ve been working on”)_ before insisting she had other things to attend to in preparation for the ceremony. The gathering itself was small, far _less_ attended than Yakov would have preferred, far _more_ attended than Viktor would have preferred, consisting of the Northern Court, their two families, and the early revelers who’d answered Yakov’s summons and were due to stay here until Samhain. In the end compromise had been struck: _this_ , for now; something formal _later,_ something that would acknowledge the prestige of the family Yuuri was joining in the way that tradition suggested was appropriate.

Lilia had arranged their guests around the stone circle of the council room, set up altars to each of the four directions at its cardinal points, stood in the center of the circle, awaiting the arrival of each groom. The queen wore a heavy circlet of golden vines set over the severe bun at the top of her head, interlaid with gemstones that shone in various shades of green and white. Her gown featured these greens and bronze colors, and her cloak — finely embroidered like Viktor’s, like Yuri’s, no doubt of her own make — was a deep evergreen, all of the colors of Ast Petyriel and a better reminder of her wild nature magic. Yakov, who looked displeased but resigned, remained at the Northern point, dressed in dark shades of charcoal. He, too, bore one of Lilia’s magic cloaks, perhaps the first of its kind; the color of stone with a great black bear emblazoned across the back.

Viktor arrived first, walking alongside his brother, cloaked and crowned and in the formal attire which best emphasized that they were each royalty, lest anyone dared to forget the fact in Yakov’s own house. Yuri, glancing around the room, made one of his _tch_ sounds, rather half-heartedly, and then pushed Viktor towards the center of the circle before walking over to the Northerners, where he lingered near Otabek; comfortable in the banshee’s shadow without needing to give into the urge to touch him.

Yuuri walked in second, and for the first time Viktor realized what Lilia’s project had been, started all those weeks ago, back in Ast Petyriel: unlike the time Christophe had seen fit to style the halfling, Yuuri wore his own clothes now; or rather, his new clothes, fashioned by Lilia: his tunic and pants, still in the Eastern style, softer than anything a Northerner would wear but more carefully embroidered with hints of scarlet and, subtly, navy too.

It was the cloak that caught his eye, the sort that was certainly of his mother’s make, scarlet as blood but bearing the emblazoned phoenix on the back, lifting skyward amidst a swirl of golden flames.

Yuuri’s cheeks flushed almost as red as his hood as he met Viktor’s gaze, and Viktor, in a subtle daze of his own, reached somewhat belatedly for his hand, held it as they both turned to look at Lilia.

_Mother, how did you —_

_— it doesn’t take any particular genius to see how you look at him, Vitya, and to realize you've never looked at anyone before and will never look at anyone hence that way._

“Are you _crying?”_ Jean-Jacques hissed lowly to Christophe, from where they stood near the Western part of the Circle. 

“I love weddings,” Christophe whispered back, laying a hand on the python coiled over his shoulders, his eyes soft. To be in the presence of such a tangible love was to be awash in a magic not of his own making and it was impossible not to simply bask in that glory. It reminded him of his own, promises made in front of a group of the rangers, in a place that was far from here. “When’s yours going to be?”

Jean-Jacques looked surprised and then glanced over his shoulder at Isabella; Isabella who’d tolerated all of his flaws, all of his bravado, and still chosen him. He managed a wry smile. “Maybe _you’ll_ officiate,” he declared, and then Lilia was speaking, and he waited to watch.

“Yuuri and Viktor, know you this before you go further: the twining of your lives will form eternal and sacred bonds. With full awareness, know that within this circle, you are not only declaring your intent to be hand fasted before your families and your witnesses, but you speak that intent to the ancients and to the gods. The promises you exchange today and the ties made here will greatly strengthen your union, and will forever mark your souls as you grow. Do you still seek to enter the ceremony?”

“Yes,” said Viktor, resolute, and Yuuri, inspired by his example, his _willingness,_ echoed the same.

“It is our custom that all things share a spark of original divinity,” Lilia murmured. “We align ourselves with the four elements, each of which carries an original blessing of the gods for your union. Blessed be this union with the gifts of the East, bearing openness and breath, communication of the heart, and purity of the mind and body.” She gestured to the Easterlings, standing around the Eastern altar, and then laid a hand on Yuuri’s shoulder. “From the east you receive the gift of a new beginning with the rising of each Sun, and the understanding that each day is a new opportunity for growth.” Slowly Lilia turned to regard Seung-gil, standing alone to represent the Southrons. “Blessed be this union with the gifts of the South, for energy, creativity, and summer’s warmth. From the passion inside, may you generate light, strong enough to share with another in your darkest hours.”

Looking West, Lilia pointedly ignored Christophe as he gave a whistle, grinning through the sparkle of his eyes. “Blessed be this union with the gifts of the West, for your capacity to feel emotion. In marriage you offer absolute trust to one another, and vow to keep your hearts open in sorrow and in joy, in strength and in weakness.” Finally, her hand moved to Viktor’s cheek, and Lilia offered a slight smile, her first. “Blessed be this union with the gifts of the North, which provides safety and security. May the earth feed and enrich you, and give to you a stable home to which you may always return.”

 _Always return_ took on new meaning, now, and Yuuri looked away from Lilia to Viktor, letting those words sink in against the reality of coming cold:

 _Always,_ he thought. _I will always come back for you._

“I’m supposed to bid you look into each other’s eyes,” Lilia murmured, “but I see that I won’t have to do so.” She glanced over her shoulder, back towards Yakov and Yuri. “Yura, please?”

Yuri came forward carrying four cords, and he looked at Viktor for a brief moment, then handed the first one to his mother. “Will you honor each other as equals in this union, and respect another, and seek to never break that honor?”

 _Equals._ Yuuri had never dreamt of the word, not relative to the High Prince, and here they stood, Vitya convinced of the truth of it, accepting and encouraging. Viktor’s silver magic trickled over Yuuri’s fingers in sweeping waves; Yuuri’s moved slowly up Viktor’s arm, soft and pale as golden sand. Blue eyes met his in understanding and Viktor waited until they both spoke together:

“We will,” they agreed, as Lilia tied the first knot.

“And so the binding is made,” she said, and accepted the second cord from Yuri. “Will you share each other’s pain and seek to alleviate it?”

 _I will,_ thought Viktor, determined. He was going to find a way somehow. _I will,_ thought Yuuri, who somehow was going to ensure that Viktor might wake up and know he was cherished, even in his absence. Ocean blue and vermillion red spiraled delicately around their fingers, delicate and purposeful: lest the flames sear the sea, or the water extinguish the fire. “We will.”

“And so the binding is made,” Lilia confirmed, and tied the knot, taking the third cord. “Will you share the burdens of each so that your spirits may grow in this union?”

“We will.” Yuuri’s heartbeat hammered in Viktor’s ears, rabbit-rapid; he smiled broadly, fondly, and watched the same expression blossom on the halfling’s face. Yuuri’s magic was warm; not quite so fierce as he remembered, now, but comfortable and careful as hearth and home, and he could feel it starting to seep into his skin, sense the nervous flush that made up the fire mage, closer than it had ever been before.

“And so the binding is made,” repeated Lilia. “Will you share each other’s laughter, and look for the brightness in life and the positive in each other?”

Somehow it was Yuuri who laughed first, astonished, and Viktor who followed him. “We will.”

Lilia tied the fourth knot. “So the binding is made,” she said, and reached up to clasp both of their shoulders.“Will the families of these two here come forth?”

The Katsukis stepped forward, and Mari bumped her brother’s shoulder before moving behind Viktor, where Toshiya, Hiroko, and Mari each laid a hand on his shoulders. Yuri glanced back at the King and then tilted his head towards Yuuri, as they both moved forward afterwards.

_This won’t work without you._

_I know,_ grumbled Yakov, who fixed Viktor with one more stern look. _You’re still an idiot._

 _A tremendously happy, married idiot,_ Vitya shot back, flashing his heart-shaped smile and the full brilliance of his joy. Even Yakov gave an amused snort, and clapped his heavy hand on Yuuri’s shoulder. Lilia and Yuri did the same. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, and around Yuuri washed subtle waves of green, white, and the gray of stone. Over Viktor, Mari and her parents cast their magic, and for a moment they all stood in silence as these new bonds sank in.

“Will you share in each other’s hopes and dreams?”

Dreams too big to bear alone.

“We will.”

Viktor felt the warmth and familiarity of Yuuri’s parents; Hiroko’s kindness, Toshiya’s cheer, Mari’s laid-back ease. He understood suddenly how these influences had forged all of Yuuri's cares, had crafted his gentle heart. Yuuri felt Yakov, protective as the mountains themselves; Lilia’s keen insight; the unexpected brightness of Yuri, sharp as starlight, and knew, suddenly, that these forces, fierce and brilliant, had been slowly turning Viktor into diamond for decades, had forged him and then made him shine.

“And so the binding is made. Yuuri and Viktor, as your hands are bound together now, so your lives and spirits are joined in a union of love and trust. The bond of marriage is not formed by these cords alone, but rather by the vows you have just made. For the fate of this union is held in your own hands. Above you are the stars and below you is the earth. Like the stars your love should be a constant source of light, and like the earth, a firm foundation from which to grow.” Lilia moved back around to the front of them as Yuri and Yakov stepped back to the Northern altar, as Yuuri’s family moved back to the East.

“May these hands be blessed this day,” she said. “May these hands be blessed this day. May they always hold each other. May they have the strength to hang on during the storms of stress and the dark of disillusionment. May they remain tender and gentle as they nurture each other in their wondrous love. May they build a relationship founded in love, and rich in caring. May these hands be healer, protector, shelter, and guide for each other. On behalf of all those present, and by the strength of your own love, I pronounce you married.”

Even if the assembly was small, there was a chorus of cheers, and then Yuri beat his mother to it:

“Kiss him, you idiot.”

Viktor did. Yuuri did.

Hearts and minds sang out the same tune: _I love you, I love you, I love you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will be samhain. warnings will be published at the beginning of the work for that chapter, so you can decide what to do with it when i get around to it.
> 
> handfasting vows were adapted from https://apracticalwedding.com/sample-handfasting-ceremony/ and http://www.vowsoftheheart.com/ceramonies/handfasting-wedding-ceremony/
> 
>  
> 
> also right as i was about to post this came up on my playlist so have a thing:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2URIAPegF4


	19. the ragged winter game that says i am alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING; the archive warning that is on this fic comes true in this chapter. the impacted character will be back in the story by mid-way through ch. 20.
> 
> required listening if you really want to give yourself a severe case of the feels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzNvk80XY9s
> 
> link to tumblr post for my thoughts on this chapter and why things have happened in this fashion:
> 
> https://handsingsweapon.tumblr.com/post/158558928741/how-rare-and-beautiful-it-truly-is-that-we-exist
> 
> if you're still sad please go read pt. 2 of st. petersburg rules, which will be posted in a few mins, too. i promised fluff, so. 
> 
> ♡

_Mabon (Autumn Equinox), 1017 II Age_

Any other wedding held on any other day might’ve been followed by dancing; instead they followed the Mabon traditions and feasted, listening to several performances of rather evocative, solemn music. Yuuri watched Lilia’s fingers as they danced across the strings of a harp, nearly entranced, and he glanced up, startled, when he heard Viktor’s voice without the Prince having said a word at all.

_Are you tired?_

Viktor, who was now nestled into some part of his soul, the same way his own magic was; growing stronger there while the phoenix dwindled in fire and strength. _… That obvious, huh?_

Viktor turned to kiss his temple, the gesture somehow more poignant now that he could feel the echo of it in Viktor’s mind, open and fresh and _new._ The prince did not respond in words nor direct his thoughts back towards his lover, his _husband,_ but he’d noticed that Yuuri’s temple was cool when it was usually so warm, and that his heartbeat, usually the faster of the two, was slower, and very subtly erratic. Instead he smiled deliberately, and offered Yuuri a hand up, moving them further away from the circle of elves and mages watching Lilia’s performance. “I just want you to myself,” he quipped, once they’d slipped away, but there was no mischief to Viktor’s statement, no predatory gleam in his sea-blue eyes, no bedroom intent.

Yuuri smiled, and then sagged into Viktor where they stood in the corridor, twisting his arms around _his husband’s_ shoulders. Miraculous. That was a word for those two words, put together into a sentence.

_What is it?_

_I …_ There were not sufficient words. Still, Yuuri tried, threading his fingers up into Viktor’s hair. _I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I am today._

Viktor studied him with such a fond, steady gaze, lashes lowering as Yuuri’s fingers swept through long, platinum strands; felt Yuuri’s marvel, his gratitude. _Me either,_ he confessed, tilting his forehead against Yuuri’s for a moment with a flicker of a smile. Then he reached back for Yuuri’s hands, studied the tips of his fingers. Yuuri’s hands were cold. Yuuri’s hands were so rarely cold.

Still, they were Yuuri’s hands. “You …” For a moment he allowed himself to replay the vows they’d made, the glorious surprise of Yuuri walking towards him in one of his mother’s cloaks, hair tousled and cheeks flushed. Yuuri laughed softly in response.

“Viktor,” he teased, lowly, which was rare: between the two of them, Viktor was the flirt. “I will wear whatever you want if it makes you feel like that again.”

It did strange things to his heart, made it feel curiously light, like it might fly away; constricted his chest. _Your hands are cold._ “Careful,” Viktor cautioned, and saw for himself how fond Yuuri was of the crooked edge of his own grin. “That sounds dangerous.”

 _Sorry,_ thought Yuuri, and for a moment a flicker of warmth buzzed, sporadic, around his fingertips; inconsistent, weak magic that Viktor propped up without a second thought, wrapping their joined hands in wisps of white.

“Is that better?” He asked, more seriously, though he felt it, the open danger of this: that the magic he used to fill the spaces couldn’t be properly reciprocated. Magic could be shared across bonds, used to stabilize and heal, the way Yuri and Otabek had done for him out in the desert until Yuuri had arrived with the magic of life itself. It was a premise built on reciprocity and restoration; that once whole again, the bond would stabilize itself. This was not a yawning abyss, but intuitively he understood the rift cut open, knew to tread carefully.

Yuuri, though, relaxed into him and the decision was made nonetheless. “… Gods, yes,” he admitted, momentarily unaware of the rattle in his chest, or the creak of his joints, or a dozen different indications for the way death was making its way into his marrow.

Viktor picked him up, awash in an aura of soft silver and white, carried him down the hall. “Good,” he murmured. _Let’s get you to bed._

 _Let’s get us to bed,_ Yuuri agreed, with the same subtle impishness Viktor had recognized before, and for once the flush ran over the high bridge of Viktor’s nose, and he picked up the pace.

In the morning, Lilia left — back to Ast Petyriel, for a last look through the library, promising to return for Samhain — but both of them missed it. Twined up in Viktor’s arms exactly the way he’d fallen asleep, Yuuri was too comfortable to wake, and Viktor, drained from more than just an evening spent trying to determine whether or not there were places he _hadn’t_ yet kissed, overslept too.

 

\- - -

 

_One Week after Mabon (Autumn Equinox), 1017 II Age_

Yuri found it extremely irritating to watch Viktor be as happy as he was, and as exhausted as he was at the same time, only a single week into his idiot brother’s marriage. The Court at Mosciren had shifted to accommodate; the stewards held breakfast, or delivered it to Vitya’s suite, and it was commonplace now,for their excursions to be brief, to catch Yuuri swathed in the new scarlet of his cloak _and_ in subtle streaks of silver and white, which was all Viktor’s strength on loan.

He spent more of his time with Otabek, whose silent, stoic presence was calming, sparred until he’d exhausted all of his annoyance and then sat listening to the ban side’s steady heartbeat until he felt like talking. “Explain it to me, Beka.”

Otabek glanced over with a wry smile. “Could you be more specific?”

Yuri scowled, which only made the ranger’s smile widen at one corner, left the ban side looking at him with a glimmer of bemusement which was only tolerable because it came from _Beka._ “What Viktor’s doing right now. Is it dangerous?”

“I’m not sure I even know,” Otabek admitted, and when he caught the real hint of distress in Yuuri’s answering frown, he shifted closer. “Do you want to ask Seung-gil?”

“… Yes.” Seung-gil was more quiet than Otabek, unreadable and unknowable. Yuri was not sure he _liked_ him. The dog familiar that followed his steps was unnerving. So was the idea that somehow, he and Yuuri — Yuuri whose thoughts sometimes came through on the family link now, gentle and open in comparison to the hard edges of the Northerners — were bound up in this together. “Is that okay?”

“Mm,” said Otabek, and he closed his eyes for a second, turned his head, and sang shortly and briefly into the wind, a strange, minor scale that was over nearly as soon as it began. Then he tilted his head to listen. “He’s coming,” he said after a moment, though Yuri had heard nothing more than the whistle of wind and still did not understand the mystery of it, these songs of the banshees.

Nonetheless Otabek was proven right, as was so often the case, and Seung-gil stood expressionless in front of them both. “You called?”

Sensing that Beka was waiting, this time, for him to speak, Yuri cleared his throat. “I was hoping you could tell me a little bit,” he said carefully, “about what it is that Viktor’s doing.”

Seung-gil glanced towards Otabek, waited for the Ranger’s subtle nod. “It’s not that different from what you did in the desert,” he said quietly. “Yuuri’s magic is fading. Viktor is supplementing it with his own.”

“What I did was temporary, it was an emergency, Beka was —“

“Yes.” Seung-gil glanced towards Otabek, raised his eyebrows. “Beka was stupid, too.”

Otabek didn’t deny it.

“But he can’t do it _forever_ ,” Yuri protested.

“He won’t have to,” Seung-gil reminded him, and Yuri wasn’t sure why that stung. Yuuri was Viktor’s problem, not his; he hadn’t gotten attached at all to this strange Viktor who smiled and who was soft, or to the gentleness the Halfling had introduced into their family, soft as the morning breeze out of the East.

Not at all.

“What if he —“ No. That sentence was too terrible to imagine and Yuri stopped himself before he could complete it, grateful for the way Otabek laid a hand between his shoulders, gave him some other point to focus on; something that didn’t end with his brother flinging himself into a battle with death that he couldn’t hope to win.

“It’s easing his passing, isn’t it?” Otabek inquired calmly, sweeping his fingers, steady and sure, across Yuri’s back, though his gaze remained steady and even on Seung-gil.

“Yes.” That much Seung-gil could agree with. “He’s making the unbearable bearable.”

_Vitya …_

 

\- - -

 

_30 days to Samhain, 1017 II Age_

“Where are we going?”

It was Viktor’s idea, some post-lunch excursion while the autumn sun still had most of its strength. Above them the sky was clear and blue, and the mountain air crisp, a day beautiful enough that Yuuri completely forgot the turn of the months. Viktor had selected one of the strongest horses from the stables, a big draft horse strong enough to carry two, and it wasn’t comfortable, if he was being honest, to ride on the front of the saddle, but it was _nice,_ leaning back against the plane of Viktor’s chest, balanced between his husband’s easy hold on the reins.

“It’s a surprise,” Viktor murmured, smiling as he dropped his chin onto Yuuri’s shoulder, thinner than it should have been, frailty where there’d once been strength. Yuuri chuckled in spite of himself.

From Viktor, this was the least surprising of all possible answers.

They rode steadily and carefully onwards for about an hour along a narrow mountain trail that Viktor clearly had memorized, though he took it with great care, climbing upwards while Viktor narrated old Northern fables in his thoughts; stories about ancient mountain giants who’d done battle and now lay sleeping in the great hills.

“Here we are,” Viktor murmured, and he stopped, dismounted with care, and helped Yuuri do the same. _Can you walk for a little while?_

_Yeah._

“Good. Look this way.” Yuuri turned, and Yuuri looked, and there, spilling between the crevice of two of the mountains of the Mosciren range, lay the great glacier of the north, sparkling a cool white under the sun, stretching on for what looked like miles. Viktor looked upon it the way someone might’ve looked at an old friend, and Yuuri suddenly understood without asking that Viktor had been here countless times before, had climbed the glacier’s face, had strode out on its frozen, white surface, surrounded by ice for almost as far as the eye could see.

The beauty of it was so severe it rattled him, and he stopped to cough for a while, held up by Viktor, and a sudden, easing sweep of Viktor’s magic. Viktor smiled at him, but his eyes were a little sad. “This is one of my favorite places on earth,” he said.

Yuuri didn’t trust his voice. _What are the others?_

 _The moon pines in the forest of Ast Petyriel,_ Viktor answered, _and a beach a few miles north of Hasetsuil, where I met you._

They did not stay for long; Viktor was too attentive, hyper-attuned to the shifts in Yuuri’s energy levels, and Yuuri looked back over his shoulder with a longing that must’ve been anything but subtle as they left. “We’ll come back someday,” Vitya promised, which made Yuuri smile, and relax back into Viktor’s chest, and let the clop-clop-clop of the horse’s hooves against the trail nearly put him to sleep.

 

\- - -

 

_Two weeks to Samhain, 1017 II Age_

The cough got worse. His appetite dwindled. Yuuri didn’t dare look at himself too closely; knew well enough that sometimes Viktor traced his ribs, not just because it was a lover’s touch, but because now they could each be counted. At dinner he picked at his soup, drank the tea of healer’s herbs that Lilia had instructed the mages to provide, a bitter drink that nonetheless helped a little bit with his symptoms, even if it also made his head swim, made it difficult to write.

He had given Mari had a project; it was important to be able to _think,_ to dictate…

Nevertheless, the night was horrible, spent racked with coughs, shivering with fever, and it was selfish, wasn’t it, to gasp in relief when Viktor pulled him roughly into his arms and flooded him with foreign but not unwelcome magic. Viktor’s magic felt cool and it swept into the crevices of his being, reminded him of morning tides at Hasetsuil, and yet he _knew_ the cost of it, the way Viktor woke up with circles under his eyes and lagging energy, giving away all of his brightness so freely to this _parasite_ he’d married.

“Vitya — stop, you’ll —“

_You’re hurting yourself._

Viktor shivered but didn’t stop, and Yuuri was too relieved to protest, once again set momentarily free from aches and from pain. The vice around his lungs loosened; for a moment he could breathe more readily, avoid the coughs that left splatters of blood on handkerchiefs that were best thrown away. Viktor’s voice in the dark was rough and unsteady and it surprised him:

“Will you share each other’s pain and seek to alleviate it?”

It was one of their vows. Yuuri blinked back tears as Viktor turned him gently, cupped his face in both hands, tangled their legs together. _I knew what I was getting into, Yuuri,_ he reminded him, settling into the knot they so often made as they slept, fond of the soft brush of Yuuri’s hair against his chin and the loose overlap of their arms. In love with the tickle of Yuuri’s breath against his throat: because it was Yuuri’s breath, and every brush of it defied the odds, was life in the face of death, still persisting.

_I chose this when I chose you._

_I don’t want you to suffer._

“Makes two of us,” Viktor joked gruffly, but his eyes were serious in the dark.

_Loving you could never be something like suffering. Understand that._

_Thank you for taking me up to the glacier today._

_We’ll go back when you’re strong again._

Yuuri liked this, the rare times when Viktor let himself see further ahead than Samhain, when he let himself think of Springtime. “Where else?”

 _Hasetsuil with your family._ He got the impression of a wicked smile. _Make proper use of those springs._ “We’ll go shopping in Shen-Osheth, and I’ll buy you rubies, topaz, anything that reflects the highlights of your eyes,” Viktor murmured. “Walk through fields of flowers going into harvest. You’ll teach me how to fly one of those eagles your people train —“

“You’ll have to get one first,” Yuuri mumbled, sleepy. “Like Vicchan…”

“You’ll teach me how to _get_ an eagle,” Viktor corrected, all slow amusement. “Then I’ll learn how to fly it.”

“Mm.”

It sounded nice. This future. Something worth coming back for.

 

\- - -

 

After that there was little to no exiting their room at all; Yuuri was too ill, and Viktor wouldn’t leave him.

Lilia returned three days before Samhain and did not need to say anything to tell her son what he already knew. The fall of her hand on his shoulder and the unusual softness in her eyes said enough: in the great library at Ast Petyriel, there was no cure.

 

\- - -

 

_The day of Samhain, 1017 II Age_

Viktor’s suite, once lived in alone, had become an informal camp; Mari fell asleep in her chair one night and after that the prince had merely ordered a change of routine; three additional beds set up in his room for Yuuri’s parents and for his sister. Yuuri had stopped trying to talk; had been nothing but quiet endurance and gratitude in the echo of their bond. Seung-gil frequently lingered in the hallway, an unwelcome reminder, though nonetheless he periodically came to check on Yuuri with an uncharacteristic devotion, a duty Viktor could’ve almost respected if he didn’t hate its very existence with every fiber of his being. Yuri stole in from time to time to pick fights, the only way he knew of distracting his brother, but it was also Yuri who pulled the blankets up higher and who fluffed pillows when he thought nobody was looking.

Viktor woke long after morning, exhausted and completely unready to face this _last day._ Upon reckoning with the reality of the light streaming in through his window, well past mid-day, the sharp edge of Viktor’s grief was so severe that it steadily drew others: Yuri, who flew in first, dragging Otabek with him, and then Lilia, and finally Yakov, who lingered near the door with a stoic frown, his arms crossed.

Even Christophe, wandering nearby, had found himself unable to resist this nest of cares, though he remained closest to the doorway. The concern in the air was thick, so was pain, and grief, and all of the fragility of love with its sometimes shattered hopes, and it was terribly tempting to dispel all of it, to simply reach into these emotional wavelengths and _change_ them.

It would have also been a great injustice. The ban side had taught him that. He resisted and endured, silent and unsmiling.

Viktor, though; Viktor was a mess, sitting against the headboard with his head pillowed atop Yuuri’s, the halfling between his legs, protected by his arms and by wild waves of white and silver and blue.

He had not been able to stop crying.

_Vitya —_

He did not know when, precisely, Yuuri had begun to use the nickname that came so easily to his family, to his Northerner friends, couldn’t remember it. It had happened so easily and without thinking, perhaps, that he’d failed to mark the moment. He should have. He had not paid enough attention. There had not been enough time. _Yuuri —_

“With your permission, your majesty,” Seung-gil said, carefully, ignoring Mari’s pointed sniffle or the way both Hiroko and Toshiya looked away. Around his ankles, magic swirled until the hellhound took shape, tilted its three heads over towards the sick figure on the bed, and _whined._

“No. No, there has to be —“

_I said I would fix it._

Seung-gil’s voice took on a hard edge: “Your magic is going to fail you and then he’s going to start to suffer,” he said sharply, and Yakov growled, muttering warnings about _banshee insolence._

“I’m not ready,” Viktor said, stumbling over the words. He’d assumed he could do this. How could _anyone_ do this?

Next to him Yuri shifted, white magic coming to life in his palms. Otabek’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Yuri shook his head softly, and climbed up onto the bed to sit on its edge, placed his hands on Viktor’s shoulders.

It was like touching _a void,_ and then suddenly Beka was there, all smoke and shadow, the way he’d been in the desert: something else to anchor him away from that gaping darkness. “Vitya,” Yuri gasped in surprise, staring at his brother, whose face was wan and hard and still resolute. _You’ve been facing this?_

 _Yes._ Viktor’s thoughts were brief, clipped. Yuri had the sense that if he’d had the energy, he might’ve added: _worth it._

Yuri looked back at Otabek and saw what he had not seen on the Sunset Road, too preoccupied with Viktor’s state to notice how spectral Otabek looked, standing on the edge of this plummet into a magical abyss, and trying, with all the strength of the shadow wyvern, to hold everyone else back from it.

“This is not something you _fix_ ,” Seung-gil snapped. “This is not something you can just —“

Viktor’s blue eyes snapped upwards, positively alight with magic. “Wish away,” he finished fiercely, and suddenly he was pushing Yuri’s hands away, and the magic that had been pooling around Yuuri drew backwards, began to solidify near the bed into the outline of the stag. Viktor’s hands shook while he did it, this summoning; Yuri had never seen him so weak, so emptied of power. “Someone,” he begged, as Yuuri’s heartbeat began to weaken in his ears.

Sunset was coming and sunset was the start of Samhain. Viktor’s eyes tore through the room, tear-stained and wild. “ _Someone_ , anyone. _Wish.”_

Yakov pushed off of the wall and strode forward, only to be physically restrained by his wife, who gave a sharply worded _wait_ on which her voice cracked, betraying the feelings Lilia so often preferred to keep obfuscated. The Katsukis hesitated. Yuri reached out to touch the stag, flickering in and out of corporeal form, and Seung-gil stepped forward, hound snapping into action, ready to intervene.

“This is the problem!” Shouted the banshee, furious. “This is the problem with all of you _aes sidhe._ This is the way the world is now. You've _done enough_. You don’t get to change it anymore. You have to learn to _live in it._ ”

Viktor ignored him. _Yura. Please._

Yuri still reached. Otabek caught his outstretched hand, laced their fingers together, gave him a look that begged for forgiveness. Before Yuri could argue with him, someone else gave their assent; perhaps the most unexpected voice in the entire room.

“I’ll do it.” Christophe. Christophe who was crying too; hadn’t been able to stop himself.

“Christophe,” Otabek warned, surprised, because Christophe _knew,_ Christophe was handfasted to one of the rangers, Christophe —

“I said I’ll do it,” he snapped, and strode forward, summoning the python as Seung-gil stepped forward to block his way. Christophe’s eyes glowed a sharp purple and suddenly Seung-gil stepped back in _terror,_ the single emotion Christophe had chosen for him to feel, because it _got him out of the way._

Viktor stared at him, uncomprehending.

“You’re my best friend, Viktor.” Christophe murmured, kneeling next to the stag. He remembered it so well, the _exact_ way it worked the last time. “I’d go to extraordinary lengths to save you from pain.”

“Please don’t do this. You _know_ there could be consequences —”

“Shut up, Otabek.” Christophe knelt down, running a hand along the stag’s back, looked up at Viktor, tilted his head.

_Vitya._

Yuuri’s voice in his heart, so weak, so very nearly gone. _Vitya, don’t —_ Viktor was mad with it.

“I have one condition.”

“Anything.”

Before I do this,” Christophe said, looking up at Viktor, “I want you to ask yourself one question. Tell me now that you believe he’ll be precisely the same person you love, once the wish is made.”

Viktor stared at him, and this last wild hope of his shattered. _He_ had been the subject of a wish once, had not been in control of himself for nearly a year, and _Yuuri …_

Yuuri who was fire and life, with all of the unpredictable flicker of both. Yuuri who was so gentle and yet so determined. Yuuri who’d accepted this terrible fate with open hands, and hadn’t come out of it with a broken, unwilling heart, had still been willing to share his secret, had opened up slowly and carefully as Hasetsuil's cherry trees, blooming in the springtime.

Eventually petals fell.   
  
It was what made the blossoming special in the first place.

Yuuri who was the physical reality of this new age, the miracle of life and the terror of death, embodied in this person who’d crossed paths with him and then returned _Viktor_ to life. Yuuri who he looked at with such wonder. Even now. Especially now.

Yakov’s voice was distant thunder. “What are you doing, Vitya? Tell him to do it.” It was immaterial.

This was who Yuuri was.

_Yuuri._

This was what it meant to choose him.

_Vitya —_

_I don’t want you to go —_

_I’ll always come back._

What little there was left of him seemed to make a conscious effort to re-establish itself in Viktor’s thoughts. _I have a wish, too. Not this kind of wish._

_Do you?_

_Yes. I want you to know how much I love you. You’ll see it. Trust me._

“Seung-gil,” Viktor murmured, syllables choked by a sob, and Christophe released the ban side from his wave of terror as the stag disappeared. The ban side strode forward, resolute, and the hounds howled, as his terrible magic pooled in his hands, and death came swift and quick and painlessly.

The bond broke. The subtle, warm thing that had been Yuuri amongst the gathered minds of these two families disappeared. Yuri sank into Otabek with a gasp, buried his face into the coarse dark linen of the Ranger’s tunic, taking in giant gulps of breath in sharp heaves as Otabek covered him in shadow, kept him hidden from view.

Lilia reached for Yakov, let herself be pulled into the hard, stone circle of his ancient arms. It was a weakness they elected to tolerate. A momentary, passing need. Forgivable. Something to forget when the grief had passed.

On the bed, a weeping Viktor held onto a body steadily dissolving into gold, disappearing with the last rays of the setting sun, and it was Mari, Toshiya, and Hiroko who came to hold onto him, who cried with him, because with Yuuri gone from all of their thoughts, so too was their son-in-law.

Christophe left, raced out into the hallway, held a hand over his chest as he struggled to breathe, the collective grief too much to bear.

Even Seung-gil, who stepped out to follow him, looked solemn. “You did the right thing after all.”

Christophe reached up and punched him, because _someone_ needed to be punished for this terrible reality and the reaper was convenient. Seung-gil could not be blamed for the misconception he’d held, that Christophe, who knew the consequences of playing with _fortune magic_ better than anyone, would have willingly let Viktor make such a grave mistake while still wholly ignorant of its possible ramifications, let him gamble with his lover’s magic and the pieces of it entwined with Yuuri’s soul.

But it was so satisfying to do it, for this one selfish minute. “Of _course_ I did,” he spat.

Later, at the rituals honoring the dead, traditional of Samhain and even more poignant _now,_ a duet of ban side voices rose over Mosciren, and Christophe’s thoughts had been far, far away, racing after the rangers in the distance, to the lover he still got to feel in the deepest recesses of his heart and his soul while Viktor lay shattered and alone in one of Mosciren’s high towers.

_It’s not fair._

Rafael. _It’s not,_ he agreed, across the miles that lay between them. _But it is the way of things, and Spring will come still._ It hadn’t been particularly comforting, until the ranger promised: _we will sing of him tonight. I’ll play it for you._

Yuri’s eyes hadn’t left Otabek, watching the Captain sing, glittering with tears and sometimes overrun in spite of his best efforts. “Do you know what they’re singing?”

“Yes,” Christophe murmured weakly. He loved Rafa’s songs, his sombre, melodic voice, had begged to understand the meaning of them. Now, listening to Otabek and Seung-gil, he could hear the answering echo of the clan on the ranges, monitoring the cauldron. Every so often he thought he was beginning to understand the way their songs carried on the willing winds, the wilder parts of the earth that his people had long since forgotten about.

Even in their songs of mourning they still sang to honor life; _how rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist._

“But I haven’t the heart to translate it.”

It was Samhain.

Winter had come.


	20. the real question is whether or not i will make you immortal

 

_The night of Samhain, 1017 II Age_

The room thinned out. Yakov and Lilia had responsibilities to dispatch at the festival of Samhain, responsibilities he theoretically shared but which nobody looked to him to execute now, like _this_. Yuri, obliged to present himself and his familiar since he was still bound by the wheel had followed them both looking pale and shaken, promising to return later, and Otabek had gone with him, stable and steady and showing only the slightest hints of contemplation on a face that never gave away its secrets.

For a long time the Katsukis stayed, and spoke little, and Viktor tried without success to redirect his thoughts away from the festival being honored elsewhere in the keep. For so long he’d thought Samhain the most beautiful of all of the festivals, solemn and somber, mysterious and powerful. Now it twisted his stomach: the promise of the flicker of a thousand different candles, less inspiring now that their light wouldn’t dance off of the soft edges of Yuuri’s face. The magic of it was as gone as Yuuri was, nothing more than the empty space of something he’d once loved.

Gods, the _costumes_. He’d liked the masquerade aspect, slipping into characters that were fearful and ill-understood and _strange._ How had Otabek looked upon that, Viktor wondered now, all of their child’s play at awe and dread: perhaps even a mockery of everything the ban side understood more than the aes sidhe could ever hope to. Lying down next to the fire to let smoke wash over him was something he could almost hope to understand, although the irony of it had made Viktor laugh into Mari’s still shoulder, bitter and choked. Of course that’s how things would be now: the protection of only a lingering set of ashes and a wash of smoke, nothing like the heat of the real thing.

It was the last tradition, the sprinkling of blood on the threshold, that he knew instinctively he’d never be able to watch again. _Protect us from death._ That alone was enough to make him choke on sobs again, leaning into Mari, Mari who he could no longer hear or for that matter even feel. She was physically next to him, _real,_ which had once been enough, before Yuuri had flown into his life and brought him into a world that was realer than reality.

They all cried together, the Katsuki clan and Viktor, listening to the beautiful, sad notes of the two banshees singing on the wind.

All his life he’d heard their songs described as mournful wailing. What _he_ was doing was mournful wailing; what _they_ were doing was something mysterious and profound.

When Yuri returned he thought he might’ve finally been all out of tears, dried out in a way that was wholly different from what it had felt like to race through the desert. There was dehydration, and then there was this emptiness, this boneless thing, not dead himself but certainly hardly still alive, either. Viktor thought he might’ve heard something in his brother’s thoughts, like _you beautiful idiot,_ and he barely recognized the way Mari shifted, the way she faded away with Yuuri’s parents before his brother sat next to him instead, their shoulders bumping together for a moment and a moment only before Yura put his arms around Viktor’s shoulders and forced him to lie down, swept fingers through his hair, tried to make him sleep.

Even when Samhain was long gone and only cold, distant starlight twinkled through his window, rest did not come. Even when Yuri’s breath evened out, when Yakov and Lilia’s sharp-minded thoughts faded into dreams and stillness, Viktor did not sleep.

He didn’t know how much time must have passed by the time he gave up and got back up, walking slowly and without purpose across his room, put Yuuri’s cloak on instead of his own, and shut the door behind him. Enough that even Otabek, the conscientious Ranger, had fallen asleep sitting up outside in the hallway, though someone had left a box there that he nearly stumbled over in the dark.

A pile of papers spilled over the floor, a mystery Viktor would’ve left unsolved because he had no energy for the surprise of it, no interest, except for his name on the front of them:

 _Vitya,_ it read, but more importantly, it read _Vitya_ in the handwriting he’d only come to observe a handful of times; Yuuri, who wrote with the same surprising elegance as the manner in which he danced. He almost stopped to read them then and there, but down at the end of the hall the darkness outside was getting lighter, reminding Viktor of upcoming dawn and his original purpose: to get outside, away from this castle of death and grief, to try to find someplace he could breathe.

An hour later he was climbing up the Mosciren glacier when an eagle’s cry sounded overhead, piercing and high and sharp. Standing atop the ice, Viktor watched as it circled closer, swooped down, and landed in front of him, _magnificent;_ looked into the bird’s big, dark eyes.

Vicchan.

_You miss him too, huh?_

Later, sitting there under the protective fold of one giant wing, watching the pink stripe of the rising sun grow on the Eastern horizon from his place here at the top of the world, Viktor unfolded the first piece of paper from the pile of them, and started to read.

 

\- - -

 

_1017 II Age: the first Yuuri letter_

> Vitya,
> 
> It’s just after lunch here in Ast Petyriel and I’ve just finished my afternoon ritual of watching you walk off to the library, intent on reading through every tome, book, and scroll in your mother’s incredible collection in the hopes that there’s something you can do to prevent what happens at Samhain from happening. … I’m supposed to be doing something with Mila or Georgi to occupy my time but I’ve begged off the entertainment for once, though it’s very thoughtful of you to keep arranging it.
> 
> It’s something about the way you walk in there that makes me want to write to you, and maybe when you read this you’ll be a little bit mad at me, for writing you something you’ll only ever read if you fail.
> 
> It’s a bad habit of mine, to always plan for the worst case. I didn’t really know to expect anything else until you came along and I guess habits take time to break. If you find a way and you never read this, I’ll be happy, because I’ll spend more of my time with you; and if you don’t, and I die anyway, I’ll be a little bit sad, because you’ll be alone.
> 
> You’re the type of person who should never be alone.
> 
> I’m not sure what else I want to say except to remind you I love you: that every time I look at you my breath catches in my throat because it doesn’t seem possible that someone could be so beautiful and still love me the way that you do. That I could spend years, I think, trying to decide whether or not your eyes have a little bit of green in them, in certain lights. That when my mind wanders it’s inevitably you it wanders off to: the neatness of your hands, the back of your neck, the silk of your hair.
> 
> If I’m gone now and you’re reading this and you feel like you’ve failed know this:
> 
> I am still grateful, and wherever it is that the dead walk I am still dancing, and it’s because of you and you alone that either of those things are true.
> 
> I want to sign this letter with “Yours,” which is a miracle of its own, to put quill to paper, like starting it with “Vitya” and the thought that you’re mine, my Vitya —
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Yuuri.

 

\- - -

 

_The day after Samhain, 1017 II Age_

At sunrise he almost understood Yuuri’s words, _you’ll see it too,_ watching the way a streak of red fire lit the horizon and then turned the sky the purplish color of a fading bruise. Then rosy pink. When the sun finally ascended, cresting fully over the mountains, color swept over everything, even the miles of glacier extending northwards, all pale, cool blues. He made a decision then, a snap judgment to watch it daily until he understood. Viktor read each of the letters three separate times, proving yet again that he had not quite exhausted his tears.

Only when he’d nearly fallen asleep in the ice, when the eagle nudged him, did he finally trudge back home, slow and exhausted and clumsy, and in the grips of a near faint he hardly noticed the presence of a steadying arm and the brief assessment of a pair of hazel eyes.

“Careful, Vitya,” said Christophe’s voice, or something like it: there was a strain there, too, some reason Viktor should have understood except that he was _so tired,_ and felt so far away from himself, little more than an out-of-body wraith clumsily animating his own movements as though his limbs were those of a puppet, and he hadn’t yet learned to understand the strings. The person attached to this voice was helping him up stairs, into the suite that was Viktor’s, out of the cloak that wasn’t Viktor’s and down into bed. He hesitated for a moment, sank into a nearby chair. “… do you want me to …?”

 _To what?_ Viktor was in no mood for puzzles. Still the question forced him to try to shake himself back into his own skull, to think, however briefly for something else.

“No,” he murmured finally, and shut his eyes, turned over in the blankets and gathered up the pillow that had been Yuuri’s for something else to hold onto. The rest of the words wouldn’t come, piled up somewhere in his throat.

It hurt this way because Yuuri had _mattered_ , and letting Christophe magically diminish his pain into something neat and manageable, somehow, took away from the magnificence of that simple fact.

Christophe gave a brief snort in response, enough to make Viktor think he’d gotten the answer he’d expected. “You understand I had to ask,” he added after a moment, and he could’ve meant one of two things, _then_ or _now,_ that what he probably meant was both, that maybe there was always going to be this stretched out apology between the two of them, the scar that Viktor had once considered the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

Was it, though? Or was this?

No. Nothing related to Yuuri could ever be that. He blinked slowly, got back to the question, found that he did comprehend, both _now_ and for _then._ He’d understood what Christophe had meant, kneeling in front of the stag and willing to change the world if Viktor had only been equally willing to change _what Yuuri was_ somewhere in the center of that beautiful soul.

“I do,” he confirmed, and even though it could only have been mid-day Viktor knew he was finally ready to let oblivion claim him. This was not forgiveness, not exactly, but it felt close, like a seed that had fallen in the right place, had a chance once winter was gone and the earth wasn’t so hard, so cold, so inhospitable for living things. “Goodnight.”

 

\- - -

 

_1017 II Age: the second Yuuri letter_

> Vitya,
> 
> I’ve decided I’ll write you one of these for every day that I’ll be gone, so that you have something to keep you company, something to remember me by …
> 
> It drizzled this morning, do you remember? You sat out on the balcony and let yourself get wet; not soaked, though, dewy, like how flowers look sometimes after the right sort of fog, came back inside with little clear beads of it water all over your tunic and dispersed through your hair and then you laughed at me a little bit, because you heard it, I guess, whatever it is my heart does when I’m convinced you’re too beautiful to be real.
> 
> You have the most amazing smile, you know that? But an even better laugh. We missed breakfast and this time it was my fault because I wanted to try to find out if I could drink that sound right off of your lips, to eat it up and swallow whole whatever it was that was making you so happy you shone.
> 
> I didn’t quite succeed, but we were both still laughing by the time we tumbled downstairs for lunch, and I had to swat away your hand under the table while your mother looked on disapprovingly and while your brother called us both idiots, such an ordinary moment, two morons in love; do you remember?
> 
> You probably don’t feel much like laughing today, I know, but don’t let that last for too long, Vitya. If you’re out of practice when I come back I’ll be disappointed: you should get to laugh loudly and often.
> 
> I am coming back, too: I will come over the hills the way the fog does, some morning, just before dawn, and I will be no different than I am now, just a halfling with an insatiable hunger for your smile.
> 
> Yuuri

 

\- - -

 

_One week after Samhain, 1017 II Age_

Something about Yuri’s grief had changed Otabek, too; not deeply, where the core of him was unchanged, but in a dozen different surface habits, the way they touched more often now, in a way that was different than what it had been like to sleep turned against Otabek’s strong shoulder, or to lean against him while traveling the wheel. These were the soft brush of Otabek’s fingers, tucking stray strands of pale gold back behind Yuri’s ears, drifting down his arm and across the small of his back. It wasn’t gentle; Otabek, Yuri understood better than anyone, had always been as gentle as also was brutal, carried the two in equal measures and in perfect, assured balance.

It was _delicate_. That was the word. Otabek had rarely been that.

Yuri was grateful for it. The banshee captain remained close to him, steadfast, but the little gestures inevitably came when his resolve wavered or when his thoughts tripped over the empty space in the family’s consciousness. Yuri had sworn to show _nothing_ since the first awful snapping, the thing which had yanked Yuuri’s entire consciousness from their family bond almost as quickly as it had come. Besides Viktor’s grief, which set his teeth on edge, he promised he didn’t miss the halfling, hadn’t gotten acclimated to the gentleness which his presence added to hard, Northern edges.

He was fooling nobody, but Beka let him pretend so beautifully.

It was pre-dawn and he’d decided to accompany his brother on one of these ridiculous glacier trips he knew Viktor was making, was halfway to the stables before he even registered Otabek’s presence. “Beka.”

“… Let him be for a few more days, Yura,” Otabek murmured back, and that, too, had the same sparkling softness. _Yura._ He liked the way it sounded when Otabek was the one who said it, with subtle fondness and, he thought sometimes, a little possessiveness.

There were a dozen different ways to respond to that. Brow furrowed, Yuri selected one. “I don’t like leaving him alone up there.”

“We have a tradition about the crossings souls make,” Otabek offered, in that roundabout way he had of answering an unspoken question by referring to something else entirely. When Yuri said nothing, letting his response be carried by the cock of one eyebrow and the tilt of his head, the ranger glanced around briefly. The courtyard was empty. He stepped forward, gave into an impulse to rest his hands on Yuri’s hips, and continued: “we say it takes nine days. Give your brother that. These nine mornings.”

To drape his arms over Otabek’s shoulders was an easy instinct. “You’ve been watching him too,” Yuri noted, which maybe shouldn’t have been a surprise; Otabek was in the guard, it was, on the surface level, his job. “Why?”

Otabek hesitated, and then turned his head slightly, chin against Yuri’s shoulder while he thought, and then turned his face to nose against the blonde’s chin. Yuri shivered and told himself it was because of things like _winter_ and _pre-dawn_ and _cold,_ and not because of the momentary press of Beka’s lips against his neck. “… I don’t have a good way to say it without being rude,” he decided, after a moment, and moved no further away.

Yuri's green eyes were unwavering, glittering, sharp. “Be rude, then.”

Otabek drew back, only far enough to wind his arms between them, to smooth a hand along the blonde’s cheek. “None of my people has ever had the opportunity to watch what your brother is doing right now,” he said quietly. “To see someone of his pedigree …”

No royal aes sidhe he’d ever heard of had willingly let death into his house.

“What is he doing?”

“We would call it getting wiser,” Otabek admitted, and there must’ve been something in _how_ he said it, or perhaps the subtleties of his expression itself. Some hint of respect, some growing admiration.

Whatever it was, it made Yuri kiss him briefly, short and sweet, and then Otabek was the one left to pretend he was affected by Mosciren’s unforgiving cold. “You’re an idiot,” the younger of the two princes muttered, but there was a gleam in his gaze that Otabek liked, encouraged even: _you’re my idiot._

 

\- - -

 

_1017 II Age: the nineteenth Yuuri letter_

> Vitya,
> 
> You are the love of my life, but bear with me for a moment: I’ve realized there’s no way you have the personal discipline to read these one at a time. You, who charge into every idea you have, borne up on the wings of fortune and glory …
> 
> I can picture you perfectly. You’re tearing through each of these now, aren’t you? It’s okay. I won’t be mad about it if you’re not angry I’ve written them.
> 
> Just remember to read them one at a time after this, please. Do that and then do the things that we like: take walks and look at the things that you think are so beautiful, which you always pointed out to me; dance, by yourself, if you must, imagining that I’m there because in some way I will be, maybe just as the memory of your heart but even that is powerful:
> 
> look at what your heart’s done already, Vitya, picture me, sitting against a tree, ready to write you a million love letters if I must, to keep you from sorrow.
> 
> Yuuri

 

\- - -

 

_Two weeks after Samhain, 1017 II Age_

“I’m not sure I’m ever going to like you,” Viktor admitted, finally, to Seung-gil. He wasn’t sure he could grow the capacity, could become big enough or forgiving enough.

Intellectually he understood the reaper’s obligations, now.

Emotionally …

Seung-gil’s smile was thin and wry. Unexpressive, Vitya decided, and then he did surprise himself with a momentary flash of sympathy. He’d lived in a world devoid of emotional range once; had known plains and valleys but never peaks. Perhaps someday, someone would show death love, too.

“I don’t do this to be loved.”

 

\- - -

 

_1017 II Age: the thirty-fourth Yuuri letter_

> Vitya, Husband,
> 
> This letter should just be that word, over and over again, which is all I can think of this morning every time I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror, in a window:
> 
> husband, husband, husband, husband, husband
> 
> I’m not sure who I’m thinking of more or which is the greater oddity: that I am married to you, or that you are married to me, but you have to know the way my whole body sings it, the stunning, obvious fact of this word:
> 
> husband
> 
> Writing it down doesn’t diminish the miracle of it, or marriage, I guess, but you have to know: these words are too small for us. When I let myself drift into the part of my consciousness that’s yours now I feel like I’m lying on my back, floating on some warm sea, no land in sight, because every time I try to locate the borders of where your fondness for me might end (and I’m sorry to admit, I keep trying) it just doesn’t and —
> 
> husband, husband, husband
> 
> It’s a stupid word but you’re mine now and it’s the only word I’ve got so we’ll just have to make due.
> 
> Husband.
> 
> \- Yuuri
> 
>  

_\- - -_

 

_Yule / Midwinter, 1017 II Age_

Yule felt different this year, though Lilia made sure Mosciren stayed the same, decorated with wreaths of holly and pine; lit the castle’s thousand candles, ensured carolers still traveled through the household, singing midwinter songs.

It was with her help that Viktor let himself actually catch the change of solstice, marked the promise of it feeling solemn and subtly empty in a way that he’d learned to live with. Grief was a strange bedfellow, a new resident in the halls of his being. He took in the feast, subdued; registered the news that Jean-Jacques and Christophe would be returning soon to Ast Petyriel.

Sometimes, though, there were little signs of life, like Mari of all people catching him into a hallway with a fierce hug. “Happy birthday,” she said out loud, and when he looked at her, uncomprehending for a moment, she’d thumped his chest. “You’re still my brother now,” Mari reminded him, and that, too, was a gift: this second family who hadn’t yet left him, even if no bonds kept the obligation to stay close alive.

Later, at the feast, he found Christophe, stood alongside him, watching smoke rise from the Yule log, listening to Lilia harangue Otabek into a duet.

That was curious, too, but she’d also heard and marked the song of the ban side, back at Samhain.

“Does A’ve Palmera still have its wayseeing stone?”

Christophe glanced sidelong at him, flashed a wry smile. “It does.”

“Good,” Viktor decided. He considered his next words while studying the pale amber of ale poured into one of Yakov’s elaborate goblets, put the past century behind him once and for all. Life, as it turned out, was about the present. Yuuri had shown him that; was still showing him, even in absentia. “… Don’t be a stranger.”

 

_\- - -_

 

_1017 II Age: the fifty-first Yuuri letter_

> Vitya,
> 
> You ought to be getting around to this a second time around Yule, if I’ve counted my days correctly.
> 
> Born on winter solstice, you told me once, and I laughed a bit, because of course you would be; child of winter and wild hunts.
> 
> We never celebrated midwinter in Hasetsuil the way I’m told you all do in Mosciren. I’m sorry not to see it. Perhaps I’m there and you’ll never read this and I’ve wished you happy birthday myself. I hope that’s the case.
> 
> If I’m not, my birthday gift to you is this, a reminder: the days will get longer now, the sun will rise earlier, and in a few weeks I’ll be rising with it, coming up in the earliest part of the morning to hold you close, to kiss your cheek.
> 
> Make sure you still celebrate. It’s what I want, understand?
> 
> Yuuri

 

\- - -

 

_Seven days before Imbolc, 1017 II Age_

Somewhere along the way Yuuri’s letters had stopped being in Yuuri’s hand, and Mari’s instead, a surprise of its own: so determined had his husband been to hide his project that he’d entrusted his confessions into his sister’s mind, let her dictate what remained. The content shifted subtly; stories about who he’d been as a child, for instance, and why that mattered now, why Viktor, who walked through the universe with such surety, so perfectly complimented Yuuri, who’d always interpreted it more tenuously, trembling sometimes with doubt.

There was no doubt now about what was coming. Imbolc, same as Samhain, had a horizon all its own.

Signs of Spring’s inevitability were everywhere: in the weaker snows that covered Mosciren towards the end of winter, the subtly warmer days, the drip-drip-drip of icicle melt, sun shining through each pure, crystalline drop.

Viktor could hardly sleep, for expectation.

It was almost a shame; Yuuri felt more real in his dreams than he had for a long time, visions of something Viktor could never properly remember but always woke up with sure of, heartbeat racing almost as fast as the halfling’s once had, gasping for fits of air and breath, sure that this time _those_ had been Yuuri’s hands, or _that_ had been the flicker of Yuuri’s subtle smile, like the little light of candleflame.

Seven days until a new year. Just seven more.

Somewhere along the way he made himself tolerate another conversation with Seung-gil, which must’ve been a two-way street because the reaper had been made to endure his eagerness, his hunger. “Where does he show up, when he comes back?”

“We’ve always been in the East when it’s happened,” Seung-gil admitted, which as it happened meant Nisgorieth, the place where Yuuri’d awoken bearing the phoenix for the first time. “But I’ve been told it’s not meant to be far. It won’t be there.”

“So you’re not sure?”

“It’ll be somewhere close to here. Some holy place. Do you know one?”

Sudden understanding hit Viktor and he smiled his first real smile in months. _You’ll see,_ Yuuri had promised.

Where had he been, all these days, every dawn, without even registering it? “I do.”

 _We’re going to Hasetsuil,_ Mari told him later, unprompted, packing up her things because the Katsukis had left their duties back East for long enough, were due back to Minako’s service. _He’ll want to be there for Imbolc._

Viktor, absently helping with the packing because his hands were empty, because he had nothing else to do with his time but to wander around like this, a little bit lost, still trying to fill it, had wondered at that. How were they supposed to cross so great a distance in so short a time? Even with Vicchan, left behind to await his master, it’d be … nearly impossible.

Mari studied him, then, flashed a brief, tanuki smirk.

“What?”

“You don’t know what you’re in for,” she murmured, sly. “I think I’ll let you find out.”

_Another surprise, Yuuri?_

 

\- - -

 

_1017 II Age: the last Yuuri letter_

> Vitya,
> 
> There’s nothing else to say at this point except for this:
> 
> See you tomorrow. It’ll be nice after all this time to tell you I love you again in person.
> 
> Yuuri

 

\- - -

 

_Dawn. Three days before Imbolc, 1017 II Age_

It was a morning ritual by now, to rise long before dawn, and fetch a horse, to shift the evening’s fresh drifts of snow aside the narrow trail that led over the mountain to the glacier. Viktor knew this place well enough to ascend its face even in the dark, to stride out onto the open plain of unending ice. This morning he woke even earlier than usual, startled awake after a dream that faded quickly but left Yuuri’s voice ringing in his ears:

_Vitya, vitya …_

He woke no one in the alcazar as he stole outside, wrapped up in the great silver cloak and its furs, Yuuri’s crimson one draped over the horse’s quarters like a waiting banner. He carried it with him on the uphill climb, held it as he stepped out onto the glacier’s surface, gathered between two hands like a prayer unto itself.

The sky was clear and cold, just a twinkle of fading stars overhead, and already the Eastern horizon had begun to shift in anticipation of daybreak. Viktor turned to study the rising genesis of rose and and persimmon on the outline of the mountain, the golden glow that began to blossom in the sky; _waited._ There was no one moment where it began to happen; the shifting breeze or the little embers of gold lifted by the wind, like the falling flakes of a bonfire or like cherry blossom petals, he’d never be sure. There was warmth, too, uncharacteristic and impossible for these circumstances, subtle at first but growing stronger as a streak of sunlight outlined the mountain peaks; something that collected around him and swept across his shoulders, his arms, like blown sand: soft but sun-baked, dusty and delicate.

Viktor felt his first genuine smile in months. “Hello, Yuuri.”

Behind him something was becoming more solid, was gathering strength, and the twine of magic over his shoulders became stronger, though Viktor spared only a passing glance at the tendrils of magic that swept over his shoulders, along his chest, at the arms, not quite corporeal yet, that gathered around his waist.

In the East the sun cleared the mountain and he felt all of it at once: the rapid echo of Yuuri’s answering heartbeat, the press of his cheek between Viktor’s shoulders and the strong pull of his arms, holding them close, the overwhelming flood of his magic into all the edges of his consciousness.

Yuuri whose teeth were near Viktor’s ear, who _nibbled,_ whose playful smile the prince didn’t need to see to be able to visualize perfectly. What he said was this:

“Hello, husband.”

_Aren’t you going to kiss me?_

Viktor turned and what he beheld there, standing under the dawn-stretched length of his own shadow, was a marvel: Yuuri, who looked hale, stronger than the peak of summer; Yuuri who wore a subtle, half-cocked smirk, whose eyes were molten and vermillion, whose entire body radiated gentle waves of magic in so much excess that Viktor felt some of it latching onto him, sinking in past his skin, working its way into the marrow of his bones. _Yes,_ he barely had time to mutter, to think, because this Yuuri, reborn and ablaze, didn’t wait for him, gathered whole fistfuls of that silver cloak into his glowing hands and collided into him with a kiss that was _searing._ Viktor, who’d thought about this for months, imagined what he might do, might say, found himself wholly at a loss.

It was Yuuri who noticed the glittering of his tears, who swept them away and shook his head. _It’s not the season for those, darling,_ hummed the cinnamon warmth of his thoughts, and then he stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. “We’ve got places to be,” he murmured, and reached down to gather the red pool of the cloak Viktor had dropped into the ice, swept it over his shoulders.

Mari’s words: _you don’t know what you’re in for, do you?_

“Where?”

This new Yuuri was younger, somehow, cocky angles and the seduction of spring. “Imbolc.”

The silhouette of a giant eagle overhead, chased by the brightest phoenix Viktor had ever seen, was the very least of the morning’s surprises. Yuuri’s outstretched hand shook him from his thoughts; Yuuri who, if he was any brighter, might’ve hurt to look at; who was _realer_ than real, with those dangerous, glittering eyes, the grace and assurance in his movements, that subtle smile.

_You’re not going to miss our dance, are you?_

“Never,” Viktor swore, and he felt Yuuri radiating approval as he climbed onto the eagle’s back and held on for liftoff. Yuuri’s magic swirled around Vicchan’s body, around his, was too big for them both, couldn’t stay contained in his own skin.

_Good._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (may be cackling over getting to write eros!yuuri and superthirsty!vitya for a chapter or two)


	21. celebrate increase, make it be spring

 

They flew for hours and Viktor lost track of time, surrounded by the vibrant hum that was Yuuri’s magic, tongues of brilliance that made the rise and fall of the sun almost wholly irrelevant. At this pace all doubts that they wouldn’t make it to Hasetsuil left Viktor’s mind; Yuuri’s determination was wondrous to behold, and he thought briefly of his brother, who’d traveled onwards with the revelers to complete the wheel:

_Yura, we’re on our way._

_Thanks, idiot. I got that part._ Yuri must have felt it, too, the restoration of their bond, differently, no doubt, but there nonetheless. A sparkling indication of life. A promise of springtime. Then there was a pause, telling, and Yuri’s thoughts shifted once more: _… he’s really alright, Vitya?_

 _He’s wonderful,_ Viktor promised, because it was true; Yuuri was warm and tangible and positively sparking with an exuberance he’d never had a chance to witness before, resurrected like this, awash in a power that was too big for him to understand and a love that he knew was also infinite. _See you soon._

First the mountains sloped downwards into folds of forests, and then plains, and Vicchan banked sharply to sweep along the coast, darting low over the waves just long enough for Viktor to feel the sometimes-spray of salt and sea against his face. For a long time this was enough, observing the changing beauty of the landscape, idly tuned into the surface-level precision of Yuuri’s thoughts as he directed his eagle to soar and the way his whole being seemed to shake with happiness, with life, with:

 _It’s joy, Vitya._ Yuuri’s new smile, the mischievous one, was pure danger when thrown over a shoulder as his curls waved in the wind, and Viktor bent over his shoulder to steal a kiss kept entirely too short by the reality of their flight.

_Joy._

He closed his eyes to study it better, to let it unfurl like a banner planted in his own chest. That was Yuuri’s territory, all of it, and here it was now, blossoming anew: tangible proof of that planted flag.

He ought to have been tired but he wasn’t. This ought to have been _impossible,_ but the eagle showed no signs of stopping and the excess magic that leapt and danced and sparked from Yuuri’s fingers had not yet diminished, hungry for an object, unpredictable as wildfire, too strong to simply bring into submission …

_This is how you and Seung-gil came to us, out in the desert._

“Mm.” A half-confirmation. “That was harder.”

“Why?”

For a moment there was no answer, and then Yuuri reached for Viktor’s hands, resting firmly against his abdomen. _Because it’s not good for him,_ he thought back finally, and with care that only reflected their circumstances: the height of the bird, the race towards Hasetsu, he lifted one hand to his lips, kissed the base of Viktor’s palm. Life magic was as dangerous for Seung-gil as water magic was for Yuuri, as fire and heat was for Viktor, and he couldn’t manage the perfect twining of it that their bond shimmered with, too disparate and too distant, like oil and water. “Because he isn’t you.”

It was touching in a remarkably serious way, but Viktor felt too good to be solemn. _Are you saying you’re motivated?_ He teased, nuzzling into Yuuri’s neck, and stilled entirely when the halfling’s thoughts took a decidedly — and purposefully — wanton turn. There was deep intimacy there in every abstract detail, a perfect retelling of the flutter of lashes, the scrape of fingernails, the hitching of a breath. He couldn’t see, not fully, Yuuri’s smile, but he felt the sparkling of it across their bond, too deliberate and too promising to ignore.

Viktor shivered, and leaned further into Yuuri’s back, let his hands wander. “You’re torturing me.”

_It is entirely beyond me to bring you harm, I assure you._

“Wait.” On the horizon was Hasetsuil, off in the distance, nothing more than a shadowy outline in the dark. It remained distant, little more than looming probability, but Viktor could see it nonetheless, recognized the shape of the mound overlooking the sea, and that meant they were close, meant —

Meant that somewhere on the coast was the _exact place_ they’d first met. He pressed his lips to the bare skin of Yuuri’s neck, the kiss wet and lingering, and this time it was Yuuri who wavered, whose resolve to fly onwards flickered like the tip of a candle. “Let’s walk the rest of the way.”

“Why?”

Viktor didn’t bother to censor his thoughts, grinning broadly into the wind as Yuuri directed the eagle to dive in response, all breathless, brilliant laughter.

There were few things — no, there was _nothing_ — more beautiful than Yuuri was, looking up at him from the sand, surrounded by the creep of seafoam and tides, lips swollen from kisses, one foot tracing the back of Viktor’s calf. _I met you here, remember?_

Yuuri who had the strength now, reborn awash in power like this, to roll them over, whose body was firm muscle under Viktor’s hands, no longer sharp edges of skeletal bone, ribs he could count or hipbones that bruised. Yuuri who was, nonetheless, utterly distracted watching the tangle of Viktor’s platinum hair in the sand swirling among the steady lap of waves creeping further and further up on the shore. _You’re going to make us late,_ he ground out, but the words were at odds with the way he leaned down and bit, without any delicacy whatsoever, into the hollow of Viktor’s throat.

 _Late for —_ “Yuuri — !!” Viktor didn’t need to see himself to imagine the half-circle of a fresh bruise.

 _Late for the parade we’re going to lead at Imbolc,_ Yuuri thought, soothing out the sear of his bite with a softer, gentler kiss, letting his hands wander to Viktor’s belt, to loosen it and dip below the waistline of the prince’s trousers with deft, _dangerous_ fingers that still sparked with magic and left imprints of heat on all of Viktor’s skin. There was something else there, too, something about the mark he’d just left, was still kissing, even now. It felt heady and possessive, whatever it was, this inkling of: _the whole world is going to know that you’re mine._

Gods, Viktor was _lost_ in it.

“Better hurry, then —“ Viktor muttered in response, little more than a hiss through clenched teeth, arching upwards to rid himself of his tunic. Cold water lapped at his ankles, but Yuuri was _so warm_ and he’d missed this, missed _them._ Yuuri said nothing else; his lips had found Viktor’s chest and were trailing steadily downwards, though he gave off the impression of listening before he looked up with smoldering, molten eyes.

 _Oh,_ he purred, and Viktor knew this time that it was _his_ heartbeat being inspected, his racing pulse:

Yuuri smirked at him, used his own words against him: “… This is going to be _entirely_ too much fun.”

They stumbled into Hasetsuil just an hour before dawn, laughing and shaking and _such a mess,_ and Viktor recognized the huddle of the Katsuki family, everyone but Mari politely ignoring the sandy tangles of his own hair or the pink, tell-tale blemishes across Yuuri’s throat.

Yuuri who even now still blushed subtly, even if he’d _started_ it; who licked his lips nervously and then chuckled, breathless, at Viktor’s answering stare.

“Glad to see the little shit got you here safely,” Mari remarked tonelessly, though there was a mischievous gleam in her eyes and the _tanuki_ familiar dart in clever loops between their feet, ecstatic at this morning reunion. Then they were surrounded, as he once had been, by soft arms and Katsuki-clan warmth, swept into a family hug that was strength and kindness in equal measures. The family bond between them all had settled once more as though it had never been broken, and she elbowed Viktor pointedly:

_I owe dad now, though. We had a bet._

_What bet?_ Yuuri wanted to know, and he turned red as an apple when his mother answered:

 _Your sister was convinced you wouldn’t be here until after the morning,_ she remarked, demurely, and pat Viktor on the shoulder while Yuuri sputtered, leaning up to kiss the High Prince’s cheek. _Your father and I took a higher view on the topic of restraint._

 _Tch, look at them._ Mari scoffed. _Restraint?_

 _I knew you wouldn’t want to miss the dancing,_ echoed Toshiya mildly, still smiling his warm smile, though his eyes danced the way Yuuri’s did, and the family resemblance between father and son was suddenly perfectly clear. For too long he’d thought Yuuri took after Hiroko, kind and sweet; now he saw the other side too, the promise of mayhem that might gleam the way Yuuri’s eyes did, if properly encouraged.

Viktor’s laugh chased away any notion of shame; he threw his arms around Hiroko, this round little woman who’d given him the love of his life. The prince picked her up and swept her around in a circle. _I missed you, mama,_ he thought, fondly, and grinned unrepentantly in Mari’s direction: _you too, sister-mine._

“Want me to wake up Yurio?”

“Yurio?”

“Your brother. He’s here with that banshee you’re friends with —“

For a moment, Viktor considered this new nickname Mari had tossed upon his baby brother and decided it was satisfactory. He entertained the idea of waking him up, too, in his present state; took plenty of amusement in imagining his younger brother’s screams of _gross_ as though he didn’t tend to be swept into Otabek’s orbit, as though there had been no quiet kisses or soft touches or stoic companionship, of the sort that Viktor personally didn’t understand but refused to pretend had escaped his notice.

They were going to take longer, him and Beka. Years. Viktor didn’t have that kind of patience.

“Send him off to Minako to get cleaned up,” Yuuri remarked, looking warmly on this perfect circle they made together: his family, his _husband,_ chattering idly about the other prince of the household, the furious, blinding light of his brother-in-law _. Brother,_ he corrected himself. Viktor had used all the words he might’ve used for his own parents, without qualification, as naturally and easily as breathing. Yuuri couldn’t imagine it quite yet for Lilia, wasn’t sure there’d ever be a day when he’d think it of Yakov, but there it was nonetheless: that irrevocable knitting they’d made, making vows back in the middle of harvest season. Looking down at his own still-glowing hands, he wondered: perhaps it was possible to come apart at the seams from so much love.

Or perhaps not. It kept growing bigger and still he held on to absorb it, perhaps not as radiant as Viktor was when he got the right sort of light in his eyes, but warm and so, so content.

“It was his idea to get into such a mess.”

“You started it,” Viktor reminded him pointedly, and Yuuri glanced back at him again, all smoldering eyes, as he looked from head-to-toe, _appraised._ He threw his head back and laughed when a blush crept over the high, regal lines of Viktor’s nose, relished this little power: the only person on all the earth who could fluster the prince of fortune himself.

_I intend to finish it, too._

“Gods,” breathed Viktor, cerulean eyes wide in an unabashed stare. “Please do.”

“I am getting you out of here,” Mari decided promptly. “You’re not having sex on our doorstep.”

“Spoilsport,” Yuuri muttered through a sharp, answering grin, and it fell to his sister to lead his sputtering husband away, because dawn was inching closer by the minute.

 

\- - -

 

Minako took one look at Viktor, standing in her doorway, and burst out laughing. “Gods, look at you,” she exclaimed, with an all-knowing smirk that wasn’t as piercing as Lilia’s, but sometimes seemed to be made of the same stuff. Here stood Yakov’s boy, still drying off, clothes marred by sand, throat radiating a tell-tale crescent bruise.

All that power and here he stood, brought to his knees lovesick by a Hasetsuil halfling. “… the universe has grown just, Prince Viktor.”

Viktor was too happy to argue, merely gestured up at the tangles in his hair, then down at the disarray of his clothes. “My husband,” he said, grinning around the words, “insists that you can _fix this.”_

“It’s a tall order,” speculated Minako, tapping her chin. “I guess someone has to try.” In the end, she attacked his hair with brutal precision, sent someone from her household to fetch robes and flowers.

“Ouch.”

“That’s what you get,” she sniffed, finally satisfied with the last tangle, “for not inviting me to my own pupil’s wedding.” The words were barbed but held no real sting; underneath them he detected understanding, respect even. Minako had been the first to recognize Yuuri’s familiar; she _knew_ what they’d just been through. The elder mage of Hasetsuil pat Viktor’s head a moment afterwards, satisfied with her work. “Leave it down,” she told him, forgoing the customary braids. “He’ll like that.”

After that was the matter of getting dressed. _I apologize for the time I let Christophe do this to you,_ Viktor thought, and detected the shimmer of Yuuri’s laughter.

_What’s she doing?_

_We just finished combing my hair._ A flutter of jealousy danced across their bond, pronounced, melodramatic. Viktor chuckled in spite of himself, until:

 _I just saw your idiot husband,_ Yura thought pointedly, his consciousness still a little drowsy, tangled in sleep. _What in the name of the ancients did you_ ** _do_** _to him?_

Every possible answer was lewd; Viktor redirected his attention back to the robes Lilia was holding up to him to check sizes, and decided that in this case, it was better not to reply. Eventually she snapped her fingers, evidently inspired, and helped him into robes that were the color of olives, handpainted along one side of the silk with a sprig of white camellias, one of a few winter flowers. “The Katsuki house uses this shade of green,” Minako informed him, when he turned questioning eyes her direction. “You married in,” she said, though he hadn’t needed the reminder, and reached for several nearby sprigs of helleborus in mixed variety: white and soft rose and mauve. “Might as well look the part.”

 

\- - -

 

_Imbolc, 1018 II Age_

Nothing could have prepared him for Yuuri, though, to come to Minako’s house leading his whole family, Yuri, and Otabek, wearing a similar robe of his own in an unexpectedly bright shade of blue, a compliment to summer oceans or _Viktor’s eyes,_ except for the burst of fireworks that had been painted by some artist hand in gold across his shoulders. Atop his dark curls rested a flower crown of witch hazel, the delicate, strange flowers arrayed around his head like a string of sunbeams, each one its own delicate, radiant burst.

So appropriate for sunrise.

It made the golden embers still stirring in his eyes that much more tempting, right up until Yuri’s fist hit him soundly between the shoulders. “Quit staring, Vitya, we’ve got things to —“ the sentence came to a sudden stop, and Viktor simply raised an eyebrow at his younger brother’s twitchy stare, tilted his chin upwards a little bit more as though there wasn’t a splotch of angry purple, right there in the hollow of his throat. “— what _is that_ —”

The corner of Yuuri’s mouth twitched, privately amused, and he projected a certain sort of _pride in his work_ into their bond. Viktor barely resisted the urge to kiss him, right at the edge of that playful half-smile. Then the halfling was pushing a basket of flower petals into his hands, the very picture of innocence. “You heard your brother. We’ve got things to do.”

As they walked out together he could’ve sworn he heard Yuri lean over and ask Mari, suspiciously: _is he always like this?_

Mari was decidedly unhelpful: _I think this year he’s worse._

Yuuri took up Viktor’s free hand, lifted it to his lips, kissed the first knuckle. “I like the flowers,” he murmured, and let go to sweep his fingers through the cascading waterfall of Viktor’s platinum hair, preoccupied by its shine and its softness, careful to avoid the petals Minako had threaded through. “They look nice.”

 

\- - -

 

Viktor had never danced so much, so fully; had not laughed so loudly or so often. For a moment and a moment only a hundred different stares, all belonging to Hasetsuil natives who’d been unaware of their courtship, lingered on Yuuri and Viktor as they led the parade of flowers with Minako. Then he’d promptly forgotten them all because music was playing, and Yuuri’s magic was curling around him again, tendrils of gold that were impossibly rejuvenating, made Viktor immediately forget that he hadn’t slept in days and that by all rights he should’ve been utterly exhausted, spent.

There was a sweet flower cordial that the Hasetsuil folk made and drank, and it was addictive, left him intoxicated ( _embarrassing,_ Yura shouted, but he nonetheless let Viktor sweep him into a chain of revelers dancing around the springtime bonfires, and his brother’s smile was brighter when he turned on the next lap and did the same to Otabek, whose stoic face registered both surprise and pleasure before he could manage to shut either down). He and Yuuri were not particularly caught up in each other as the festival ran onwards: this love kept bursting outwards, gathered others up into its radiance. Viktor danced with Mari more times than he could count, and led the Katsukis sunwise around Hasetsuil’s sacred wells; Yuuri challenged his brother-in-law to a repeat of the dance-off, beat him soundly while Viktor watched, approving, from a distance; then helped the blonde prince back for another round of drinks.

His husband once attempted to introduce him properly to Minako, evidently trying to make up for lost time, but by late afternoon was too drunk and giddy to manage it properly: “’s my Vitya,” Yuuri had purred, which was _adorable,_ but also left Viktor glancing off to the West, trying to approximate the hours remaining until sundown. “ _Husband_. Love him,” Yuuri stressed to Minako, who merely refilled all of their drinks and raised a glass.

Viktor had the sense that Minako did not need many reasons to propose a toast. “Cheers,” she said, and then Yuuri was holding up _his glass_ for Viktor to drink from, helping himself to Viktor’s instead.

“Dance with me,” he insisted again, with hands that had been dangerously prone to wandering _before_ and were only getting worse now. Viktor was in no mood to encourage propriety. Their next kiss was deep and unhurried, sweet as spring, _thorough._

 _Get a room,_ Yura practically shouted, across the bond that now included Yuuri, for the benefit of them both. Yuuri’s lips twitched against Viktor’s mouth, and he broke away long enough to glance around for the scowling blonde, offered a perfectly polite smile:

_Don’t you have a ban side to see about somewhere?_

Viktor had never seen his brother turn so red.

His feet should have ached. His body should have been begging for rest. Still, Yuuri swept him back into the crowds once again, circled the fires, was ecstatic, exuberant energy and life, _more life,_ the intoxication of it, an addiction in purest form. The halfling waited until after the sun had set over the plains to pull them apart from the crowd, people who’d be finishing up the evening’s feast, who would likely stay until the fires had burned out and the stars twinkled clearly overhead.

For the first time all day the phoenix flew ahead of them, twirling in scarlet spirals that trailed sparks and flame, and Vitya released the stag to give chase, glancing over as Yuuri nudged him in the ribs with a challenge in his sparkling eyes before taking off on foot:

_Come and get me, Vitya._

_Is that how it’s going to be?_

_Are you complaining, husband?_

“No,” he promised, and darted down the streets, carried by life and luck back to the Katsuki house, where love was waiting.

Even Viktor wasn’t sure who caught who first, perhaps Yuuri, pulling him into a bedroom, perhaps himself, pinning the fire magus to the wall with a fierce kiss. “You,” he growled, fingers scrambling to untie robes, to skim the strong plane of Yuuri’s chest, “have been torturing me all day.” _Days,_ he corrected, thinking of their improbable flight from Mosciren, of Yuuri’s flawless memory and his tendency to flood their bond with memories of moments that ranged from startlingly intimate to soft and companionable, like the way they’d once read together in the Ast Petyriel library, or what it had been like, that first night at solstice …

“I would never,” Yuuri protested, mumbling the words against Viktor’s neck, and at the wave of Viktor’s incredulity he laughed softly, skimming fond fingers over the silk camellias painted onto Viktor’s jacket. “Maybe a little,” he added, eyes dancing with mirth, pushing Viktor back enough to navigate them back into bed, to straddle Viktor’s hips as he shrugged out of blue silk. “I couldn’t resist. Do you know what it’s like, to be wanted so badly?”

“Yes,” Viktor replied pointedly, with an answering smirk and a purposeful underscoring of the emotions that darted back and forth across their bond. “I have a _very good idea._ ”

Yuuri visibly shivered, pupils dilated in the dim of twilight, and he swept his hands one more time over Viktor’s olive robe. _Minako did well,_ he thought, looking down at Viktor with such fondness that his breath caught. _She made you look like one of us._

 _I_ ** _am_** _one of you,_ Viktor reminded him, sitting up to claim another kiss. They’d made vows. _You did that._

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting for so long,” Yuuri murmured against his mouth, with breathtaking sincerity; the sort that could’ve broken hearts, except that Viktor’s heart was safe from such things, ensconced with the person he’d given it to. It was an apology for more than just these past days of mischief, he knew; for the cold of winter, for a Yule spent alone.

“I read your letters.”

Yuuri’s breath caught in his throat, and his hands froze against Viktor’s ribs. “Did you like them?”

“Mm, better.” Viktor’s answering smile was soft in the dark. “I _loved_ them.”

 _I love **you** , _Yuuri thought in response, simple instinct, and then he’d summoned back that fey look Viktor was beginning to get addicted to, and the subtlety of his smirk. “Still. It’s been a long time.” He was so sensual like this, so assured, awash in magic and in desire, _cherished._

He spoke with such certainty, too. “I’d like to make it up to you now.” The innocent smile was decidedly out of place; Viktor recognized the wanton bend of his thoughts, followed them to their logical conclusion as Yuuri helped him out of the robe, finally, and swept fingers under his chin. “Is that alright?”

Viktor let his answer be his kiss.

_Perfectly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> our story resumes next chapter. we are maybe 3-4 chapters from the end (!)


	22. the air that inhabits you

_The Day after Imbolc, 1018 II Age_

Viktor woke slowly, drawn into consciousness by the languid, gentle drift of Yuuri's fingers through his hair. The bed they shared in Hasetsuil was softer than those back in the North; he remembered the way they'd sunken into it, how cocooned he'd felt, drifting off to sleep. Softer still, better than down feathers and knit blankets was the awareness of Yuuri nearby, his feelings broadcast, the bent of his thoughts towards Viktor an audible and wonderful thing as he came out of sleep: 

_… you’re so beautiful, Vitya …_

He smiled, because he couldn't _not,_  when Yuuri beheld him thus, like Viktor was the one who was the miracle, even if Viktor knew otherwise.“... Good morning.”

“Good _afternoon_ ,” Yuuri corrected him, with subtle bemusement, and Viktor’s eyes opened wider, glanced up at the window. His husband was right: shadows stretched in the wrong direction, and yet … his husband answered the question before Viktor could ask it: “You needed your rest,” he hummed mildly, and Viktor glanced up, shook off the last vestiges of sleep. Yuuri, seated at the head of their bed with his back to the wall, was already fully dressed, and his wind-swept hair suggested that he'd been out at least once already. His magic had settled around him, no longer an erupting wildfire of life and heat, though his eyes still radiated the flickering warmth that Viktor loved so much. Coming back, he must've repositioned them both, and even that had not shaken the depths of Viktor's slumber. At the end of their magical race southeast, and Imbolc itself, Viktor had finally crashed headlong into the deepest rest of his life. 

“Whose fault was that?” Viktor teased, and his grin grew in time with the spread of Yuuri’s blush, the one he’d known to expect. The high prince sat up to capture a belated good morning kiss, soft and delicate, nothing like the fireworks he remembered from the night before, then rested his forehead against his husband’s with a gentle, private smile. _Now who’s beautiful?_

“Still you,” murmured Yuuri, who neatly swept his fingers through Viktor’s hair one more time, and then feathered them over Viktor’s biceps, up his shoulders, laced them together at the nape of the prince's neck. “You need to get dressed,” he added reluctantly.

“Oh? You’ve made plans?”

There it was again, that blossoming blush, this time spreading up to the neat tapers of Yuuri’s ears. “Yes.”

Viktor swept aside Yuuri’s bangs, dropped one more kiss on his forehead, and stood up to get ready, lingering for a moment on both feet as he registered the protesting stiffness of his muscles, glanced down to take in this last tangible evidence of Imbolc.

 _Sorry — I probably got carried away._ Yuuri was sheepish, rubbing at his own neck, now that they were separated, though Viktor knew perfectly well that he hadn’t been the only one; remembered digging his fingers into Yuuri’s shoulders, wondered if there were still scratch marks down his back. How many times had he bitten at Yuuri’s lips, or along his neck; how many times had he insisted that he still wanted _more_? Bonfires were often lit on the holy days of the sun; last night they had burned hotter and brighter and now there were cinders. … _I could fix it, if you’re sore?_

“No, no.” Viktor grinned, flashed the full width of his heart-shaped smile. _I want to remember,_ he thought back, and moved to see about fetching fresh clothes. He wanted to feel it, still, the way they’d come back together; intended to relish every ache that recalled the press of Yuuri’s body, the heat of his mouth, the burn of his fingers.

 

\- - -

 

Yuuri introduced him to _Mama’s cooking,_ some local dish that was a Hasetsuil favorite, which Viktor probably finished too quickly to have been polite, strictly speaking. He’d been ravenously hungry, something which Hiroko attributed to _exercise_ with a perfectly straight, saintly face.

He loved her all the more for it. 

Still, they hadn’t lingered; Yuuri took him by the hand, led him out to one of the beaches to whistle for Vicchan.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” Yuuri promised, and from there they flew southwest on the coast, where the land gradually and steadily rose upwards over the sea until Vicchan flew over the white cliffs that Viktor remembered seeing at a distance from the Ardor. Below them, Vicchan made a series of baying noises, answered in a chorus from the cliffside, and then several other shadows emerged from the rocks and caught currents of air over the ocean as they took flight. Vicchan darted sharply left and flew out over the waves to join them. There were three other eagles; two slightly larger than either Vicchan or the third, and Viktor, who knew next to nothing about them, asked for no explanation and allowed himself the simple joy of enjoying the flight, the cutting chill of the ocean breeze in early spring. The four birds circled around each other in a loose helix, and raced across the sea in big, sweeping arcs, majestic and graceful. He lost himself to the rhythm of it. The ease. The ancient gods had placed men and elves and dwarves alike together on earth; had not given them this expanse of horizon, this unparalleled freedom.

To borrow some of it now was, he understood, a gift.

They circled back slowly, and eventually Vicchan landed at the top of the bluffs, and both he and Yuuri carefully slid off the eagle’s back before he settled down, turning his attention to cleaning his feathers with a series of neat, precise nips. “This is Vicchan’s family, as far as I can figure …” Yuuri explained, as two of the other eagles landed at a bit of a distance, clearly a little less acclimated to the presence of a stranger among them. Yuuri wandered underneath Vicchan’s big wings, then ran his hand over the bright yellow beak, standing between two of his talons without any fear. _The biggest one’s his mom, I think,_ he explained, without looking back as Viktor studied them all. _So his dad's the one with her, if I'm right, and the one overhead_ _—_

The one overhead was a little bigger, too, with tail feathers that weren’t quite so long as the rest. “A sister?” Viktor guessed, and Yuuri smiled a little bit, offered a nod.

 _Baby sister,_ he corrected. _She’s just getting her grown-up feathers, see? She won’t stay here for too much longer, when she fledges._

There was some detail Viktor was forgetting, some reason why Yuuri was telling him this, some hint …

“You should see if you can figure out how to get her to come down,” Yuuri murmured, hiding a smile, and, for that matter, the rest of his thoughts.

“How would I do that?”

Yuuri glanced over the cliff’s edge, looking down at the tidepools below. “Personally? I went for for bribery,” he admitted with a short, breathless laugh, and this was a hint Viktor _could_ get: fish _._ With an answering chuckle of his own, the Prince shook his head, walked over to the edge, and closed his eyes to extend a hand towards the water, summoning up a large, swirling ball of it. This orb drifted steadily upwards, before he splashed it out over the rocks, leaving half a dozen fish flopping about on the grass. Vicchan cawed in approval, though the two other great eagles took off, wary of this strange, splashing magic. “Show off,” Yuuri accused Viktor, though he reached for a fish and tossed it Vicchan’s way to stop his own bird from rushing through and ruining the impromptu buffet. The halfling received an answering bay of approval, and smiled so broadly the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Spoiled,” he accused Vicchan, but with such warmth and fondness that there couldn’t possibly have been any real sting in the word.

 _Go on,_ he encouraged, as Viktor walked forward, picked up one of the fish by its tail. _Call her._

_How?_

_Patiently._

Patience had never been something Viktor had possessed in abundance.

 _You’re patient with me,_ Yuuri reminded him.

 _I love you,_ Viktor thought back automatically, which was perhaps an answer in and of itself. Viktor sat on the edge of the cliff with the fish extended, looking upwards at the circling shadow that was Vicchan’s younger sister. He loved Yuuri, and Yuuri loved Vicchan, which meant Viktor loved Vicchan by extension: he loved everything Yuuri loved, _because_ Yuuri had loved them first and so made them lovable …

The force of the eagle’s dive took him by surprise, a blast of air that ruffled his hair as strongly as any wind would have, and so did the neat snatch of the fish, straight from his outstretched hands. “Good!” Yuuri sounded delighted, and laughed again as she descended a second time for seconds among the pile of fish left among the grass. “Try it again.”

The fish did not last for very long, and neither did the tolerance of Vicchan’s parents, who took off to hunt bigger, more satisfying prey before sunset. Yuuri came to sit alongside Viktor, leaning into his shoulder. “You’re going to have to give her a name,” the halfling murmured, lacing their fingers together, and raising them to his lips so he might press a kiss to the back of Viktor’s hand.

“A name?”

“Mhmm.” _Happy belated birthday, Vitya._

He understood, suddenly, remembered the conversations they’d had about a long future. _You’ll teach me how to fly one of those eagles your people train_ , Viktor had said, and Yuuri had replied back: _You’ll have to get one first._

“She’ll come with us?”

“If she likes you enough. We’ll come back tomorrow.” Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, if they had to. There was _time,_ Viktor understood suddenly, so much _time._ “She needs a name.”

Viktor looked off at the horizon the eagles had taken off into, smiled. “Her name,” he decided, “is Makkachin.”

 

\- - -

 

They headed back before it got dark, floating into Hasetsuil while the sky shifted to muted mauves and dusty violets out to the west, where gray clouds had gathered, promising distant storms. Yuuri waved Vicchan off as they strode back along the beach, fingers twined, wading through the incoming tides, and Viktor considered the way his life had so easily settled into this — this gentle, all-encompassing _contentment,_ in just a handful of days.

 _Hey, idiots._ It was just like Yura to interrupt this sort of contemplation, though Viktor had to smile at the umbrella inclusion of Yuuri, who tilted his head suddenly, and who also flashed an incredulous smile. As though he’d just remembered that he had a brother, now, too. _If you hurry back you can come with us to the hot springs._

 _Us?_ Viktor prompted, giving Yuuri’s fingers a gentle squeeze, and then, forever obedient to his own whims, bringing them up to his lips.

 _Beka and I._ Yuri’s thoughts were clipped, a little strident, even: _Shut up. Are you coming?_

 _We’re on our way,_ Yuuri answered for them both, which made Viktor happy too, in some strange way he never would’ve been able to put words to. Because he couldn’t resist, he added:

_Wouldn’t miss it. Besides, you might need a chaperone._

For a moment Yuri’s thoughts radiated the cold, blazing light of his temper, and then he shot back: _choice words for someone whose sister had to cast a silence spell around his room last night, and who couldn’t get out of bed until well after lunch._

Yuuri’s face, even in the twilight, turned bright red, but Viktor was too busy laughing to care: _sister_ , Yuri had said, so easily, because it was true; they were family now. Mari was Viktor's sister now; in a way, she was Yuri's, too.

_Quit being so sentimental and just hurry up, will you?_

 

\- - -

 

The hot springs were another kind of bliss: rising steam, healing waters, perfect heat. Yuuri, who’d had boundless energy for days, who’d stayed up late, who’d risen early, was still now, the only tangible sign of life the steady hum of his heartbeat and the way he kept fiddling with the long silver tails of Viktor’s hair, wet and just barely troubling the surface of the water.

It was perfectly soporific. Viktor turned and kissed the top of his head.

Yura was ill-content with silence when it wasn’t the steady darkness of the ban side who sat in one corner of the springs. Otabek’s head was tilted back against the rocks, gaze up on the twinkle of constellations overhead, and now wasn’t the time to ask him what he was thinking, what he saw when he looked up there, counting the radiating planets and distant galaxies. “You were flying, earlier, I thought?” Yuri murmured, idly curious. “Where did you go?”

“Mhmm. Yuuri took me to where Vicchan’s parents … nest? Is that the word?” Viktor felt Yuuri’s nod against his shoulder and the hum of approval in his thoughts. “Nest.” He confirmed, then, and smiled a little bit at his brother. “He’s got a sister,” he added. “Maybe you can come with us, tomorrow, to meet her?”

_It won’t chase her off, will it?_

_As long as he’s patient._ Yuuri opened his eyes, and glanced back across the hot springs, evaluated the distance between Yuri and Otabek, who sat at opposite edges of the pool without tension or need; comfortably distant. Viktor had settled in next to him without an ounce of hesitation, draped an arm over his shoulders. The prince was still making up for lost time, still filling all his empty spaces with physical reminders of Yuuri’s presence. They’d come together like a comet, this past year; blazing and brilliant, fast, inevitable. Otabek and Yuri made him think more of the planets, the way they moved together so slowly in the sky, progressed over years and years and years through the careful patience and perfect design of everything that orbited the sun. _It’ll be fine._

“Really?” There were few things better than watching Yuri react to surprise; to this fresh reminder that the things that were Yuuri’s were now, in a way, his too. Viktor had already taken in the lesson that the world did not need to be all frozen, hard edges, was not quite the place Yakov insisted it was; Yuri was still learning, coming to his own conclusion about gentleness, striving to find a way to bear it without sacrificing any of the sharp edges he’d spent so many years crafting. Viktor did not think the subtle flush on his cheeks was from the heat of the onsen alone. “… Thanks,” his brother muttered, and he shuttered his thoughts before anyone had a chance of accusing him of being pleased.

Viktor lost track of time after that, but it couldn’t have been too terribly long. Like always, it was Yura who sent him out of his meditative lull, already climbing out of the springs. Otabek sat at a distance, wrapped back up in one of the Hasetsuil robes, nearly dry. “Mari says not to stay in too long,” Yuri warned them both, casting a piercing glance in Viktor’s direction, and whatever else he was thinking about saying was cut off on a sharp clip, and then so were his thoughts. He dressed quickly, and when he left, took Otabek with him, slipping his long fingers around the ban side’s wrist before Beka caught his palm, and twined their hands together.

“They’re cute,” Yuuri murmured, turning his lips to Viktor’s shoulder, kissing the outside edge where sinew meets bone.

“Oh?” Viktor replied idly, sweeping a hand through Yuuri’s hair, all soft curls, made more wild by their afternoon of flying and only now tamed a bit by rising onsen steam. “Say that to his face sometime,” he quipped, flashing a brief, crooked grin.

“Vitya,” Yuuri admonished, quite seriously. “I think that’s the worst advice you’ve ever given me.”

Was he ever going to get tired of all the different ways _Yuuri_ might say his name?

“It probably is,” Victor murmured, running a thumb over Yuuri’s bottom lip.

The answer, he decided, was _no._

 

\- - -

 

_One week after Imbolc, 1018 II Age_

They went back, time and time again, until gradually Makkachin needed no bribes of fish to come down to Viktor, at least. He was generous with praise and affection for the eagle’s progress, a natural teacher, Yuuri thought. Otabek watched at a distance, subtly bemused, though the ranger never went so far as to admit what was funny. This attitude lasted until Yuri finally was able to call Makkachin, too, stroked the side of the great eagle's face. “What,” he called out, looking back at the ban side, who’d chosen to sit halfway between Makkachin and the roost of her parents, who watched them all from the edge of the bluffs, “you think you can do any better?”

Now there were three pairs of eyes on him; two aes sidhe royalty and the halfling who bore the phoenix totem, and for a moment it looked as though Otabek would do nothing in response. Then he seemed to sigh, perhaps at himself, or perhaps at the three of them, curiously bunched together around the eagle. No one had demanded answers and yet it was the way of their people to want them. This was harmless. He would not disappoint. Otabek turned his head, glancing back towards the other pair of eagles, and began to sing. Yuri and Viktor had heard before the banshee’s song of mourning, but this was different, somehow; the baritone of his voice was gentle and even, _soothing_. While they all stood there watching, one of the other eagles came forward, followed at a short distance by the other, and slowly they crept forward together, turning their heads this way and that as he sang, until the larger of the two — Vicchan’s mother — nudged the ranger’s back with her beak.

“... Show off,” muttered Yuri, without spite; his citrine eyes lingered on the ranger for perhaps longer than they should have. _Banshee tricks,_ Yakov might've said, were he here, but there was so much more to it than that, such an understanding of the natural order. When Otabek stopped, suddenly, Yuri almost protested the loss out loud. The ban side froze, his eyes fixed off in the distance, fixated on a thin trail of smoke nearly invisible on the western horizon. 

“We need to return to Hasetsu at once,” he said, expression grave, and as he strode forward shadows gathered ahead, solidifying into the familiar shape of the wyvern.

“Beka, what is it?”

“Trouble of some sort at the cauldron,” Otabek replied, unusually terse. “I can barely make it out.” He looked past Yuri, fixed his gaze on Viktor. “The singer is one of the rangers, and he’s hurt.” the captain murmured, with a calm Yuri could tell he did not feel. Otabek climbed onto the back of the shadow guardian, fixing his eyes on the western horizon. “Christophe will be calling for aid, I suspect.”

“Christophe?” Victor echoed, somewhat incredulous.

“Christophe,” Otabek confirmed. “It is his mate who sings the song.”

Yuuri whistled for Vicchan, after that, and as Otabek took off he extended a hand for Yuri, drew him up on the wyvern. Before he and Viktor took off, Viktor looked back at Makkachin, clawing impatiently at the earth.

“Makka,” he called gently, “you can come with us if you want.”

 

\- - -

 

Minako met them at the city gate, and Viktor followed wordlessly to the wayseeing stone, which was not Christophe, as Otabek had predicted, but Jean-Jacques, standing in the same hall where he’d once been in Vaux Romandith.

Jean-Jacques looked _shaken,_ standing in front of the stone with a subtle twitch in his cheek. Isabella lingered behind him, one elegant hand pressed to the curve of the newest Prince’s shoulder. “… Christophe says Rafael’s trying to make for A’ve Palmera, and he’s rushed out to go get him, told me to stay here to make sure I could speak to you —“

“One thing at a time,” Viktor instructed. “Tell me what happened.”

“According to Christophe, Rafael thinks the cauldron may erupt soon. Apparently he was investigating when he came across one of the dragons — the one you fought, maybe, he says he has the impression it was damaged, otherwise he’s sure Rafael wouldn’t have made it.” Jean-Jacques winced as he relayed the tale. “He was _here_ when it happened. Viktor, you should have seen his face, he —“

“I understand,” Viktor said quietly, glancing back at Yuuri, who looked down at the floor with a flash of regret.

_I’m sorry that you do._

_Nothing for it now,_ Viktor reminded him _,_ and because it wasn’t enough to channel that reassurance over the bond, he looked away from the clear orb of the stone, from Jean-Jacques, and said the words aloud: “It was worth it,” he reminded Yuuri, who looked up in surprise, eyes suddenly shining. “I’d do it again with no regrets.”

“Where is Christophe now?” Otabek asked.

“He left for the oasis almost immediately. Viktor — before he left —“

“Yes?”

“He grabbed me by the shoulders,” Jean-Jacques relayed tersely. “Told me to beg you, if I had to — not you, Viktor, but … Yuuri. Yuuri, he asked for you.”

“... This is worse than I thought,” Otabek murmured, and he stepped back towards the door. “I am going to call Seung-gil.” He looked at Viktor, and unspoken, some understanding passed between them, something that had Otabek’s shoulders softening in relief.

“It’s Yuuri’s decision,” Viktor said, and he looked back at his husband.

_Christophe and I have each ruined each other’s lives once, but he recently saved mine, I think._

“You mean Samhain,” Yuuri whispered, almost inaudibly. “You really mean that?”

_He kept me from making you into something you are not for my own comfort._

“I would like to repay him," Viktor added quietly, "but the power he’s asking for is yours.”

 _What's mine is yours,_ Yuuri thought back, and when Viktor's eyes softened, he reached up for just a moment to touch the high line of the prince's cheek. “... Otabek,” Yuuri said, “Viktor and I will ride ahead. We can travel faster than the rest of you.”

“… If you travel over the canyons, you may be seen,” cautioned the Ranger from where he stood in the doorway.

“We will take that chance,” Yuuri decided, with a wry smile. _Luck is on our side._ “You, though, will need a second flyer and safe passage. Speak to my sister. Her illusions should grant you cover.”

“Should I meet you all there?” Jean-Jacques asked, desperate to be useful.

Viktor shook his head. “Not yet. Order evacuations from the mesas, if you haven’t already; have those who live nearby come shelter at Vaux Romandith if they must.” Sensing, perhaps, that this was a disappointing answer for the brash young prince, Viktor appealed to duty. “If Rafael is right about the cauldron, people will look to you for calm,” he reminded Jean-Jacques quietly. “We will need you still, if that is the case.”

“A’ve Palmera still has its wayseeing stone,” Jean-Jacques reminded them.

“Then we will use it at first opportunity to contact you, and hopefully with good news. Yuuri?”

Yuuri’s normally soft gaze had hardened _,_ and in it Viktor could read the courage that he’d learned to expect from his halfling, the only person on earth who he could imagine might face down his own death year after year and emerge from it singing and dancing at Beltane, wonderfully, beautifully alive.

Yuuri, who’d rewritten the definition of bravery for him, along with everything else that mattered.

“Let’s go.”  
  
Otabek held them at the door for a moment, laid his hands on each of their shoulders. None of them could understand what he said next, but it sounded a little bit like a benediction, a blessing, a prayer:

_be humble, for you are made of earth;  
but be noble, too: for you are also the stuff of stars._


	23. the wavering shadows thrown by one candle

 

_One night in 929, II Age_

A’ve Palmera was quiet, too quiet, and for the life of him, after twelve years, Christophe still couldn’t figure out if he loved or hated it. Out on the mesas, at this altitude, the stars shone crisp and clear overhead. _They_ knew what they were, the stars, but they’d all been given names anyway; names that referenced the great heroes of the first age, glory days that were long gone from the earth now. He wasn’t sure he liked those either. The legacy of those names had been too much to bear, and he and Viktor were ruined for it. Together they’d been so easy to build hopes around: two princes who might someday make the world in its original image again, so well regarded, so _talented_. The story wrote itself. Until it didn’t.

It was foreign to him, completely, this malaise; Christophe never knew what to do with it. He wouldn’t call it loneliness. A few of his people had made the journey with him; the villa was coming back together as they renovated together; he wasn’t _alone,_ he had things to do. Regret, certainly. Bitterness he recognized. He could taste it, every time he thought of the north, of Viktor, of what it had felt like to remove the crown of the west and place it into Viktor’s hands.

Viktor who hadn’t even looked at him.

That was how the great hope of the second age died: resigned to its fate, in meek surrender.

The solitude was a reprieve from the chaos that had surrounded him his whole life, though; his family, Vaux Romandith, _people, everywhere, all the time._ Christophe’s magic had come on quick: first, as a child, he’d been uncommonly good at reading people. Then the little flickers of insight had begun. Then it had been constant and inescapable. Emotions so thick and so present that he sometimes thought he’d choke.

Perhaps being removed was for the best after all.

_Twelve years and you still don’t know what you think._

Malaise. He’d never been like that. Never withdrawn. His court looked on in silent worry, but a decade had passed already, and Northern fury never just blew over. Christophe exhaled, decided he’d sulked enough, and climbed down half-finished stairs to take a walk. Sand had gathered on them, he noted: the result of the sandstorm that had blown over earlier. That meant a window was blown out somewhere. Another thing to fix. He wasn’t in the mood.

He strolled down to the oasis, idle and wayward, with no other purpose than to go to it because it was _there,_ because a full circuit around it took about an hour and maybe by then he’d be ready to go to sleep. Along the way he'd look at the stars, still so certain of themselves, out here the whole universe shone sometimes and it was too beautiful to ignore. Christophe hit the sandy slope of the southern beach at the same time as someone emerged from the water, raking brown curls from his face, and for a moment the empath could only stand there, stunned out of his reverie, and with it, shaken from his own bitterness.

It was the stranger in his oasis who spoke first. “You are a long way from home, Christophe of the West.”

“Haven’t you heard?” Christophe waved his hand around the oasis, his new kingdom-in-exile. “This is home now.”

“Ah.” The brunette hesitated for a moment. “This is not the sort of place someone owns,” he added, nearly as an aside, and then smiled slightly. It was a charming smile, Christophe decided, made more so because it was also elusive. “You have me at a disadvantage. I’m more than somewhat uninvested in the gossip of the sidhe courts.”

 _A banshee._ Now Christophe was curious, which was new in and of itself: when was the last time he’d been curious about anything? “You’re one of the rangers,” he guessed suddenly, and caught himself searching the man’s auras before he knew to do otherwise. Bemusement. A strange _knowing._ Deep patience. _Stop it. This is what got you here in the first place._

“Yes.”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” murmured Christophe next. “You know my name, and I don’t know yours.”

The stranger’s smile grew. “Fetch my towel,” he said, and Christophe wondered when he’d started thinking of him as beautiful; it was a trick of the moonlight and the treacherous stars. “Then I’ll consider telling you.”

 _Consider._ It was nearly playful, except for this stoic face that gave away nothing. Christophe hadn’t told a good joke in twelve years. “… And if I don’t?”

“Then you’ll have to learn to live with mystery, I guess.”

 

\- - -

 

_One week after Imbolc, 1018 II Age_

It wasn’t that he wasn’t _used_ to Rafael’s line of work. Part of loving Rafael meant also loving his love of the wilderness, all of the untamed and dangerous places of the world; it meant being willing to relinquish him from time to time to the ranges, and to trust that he intended to keep his word when he insisted that he’d be back. Over the years, Christophe had gotten acclimated to the way Rafael’s thoughts shifted in the back of his mind as he traveled: the determination that sent him racing ahead of storms; the resilience with which he weathered the desert; the survival instincts that kept him safe from the revenants. He’d learned to trust Rafael’s instincts more than his own.

Which is why it was so strange to sit next to Jean-Jacques, discussing the changes that needed to be made in Vaux Romandith in the upcoming year to restore confidence in the new order of things, and hear suddenly:

_Christophe._

_Rafa?_

_… I love you._

There was nothing after that: something like a curtain sprang up between their thoughts followed by an attempt, he could tell, to shield him from the ban side’s feelings, but _feelings_ were the entire sum of Christophe’s magic, and even behind the separation Rafael was trying to put up he could sense it: a surge of determination and absolute terror in equal measure.

_Rafa. What is going on._

“Christophe?”

He’d stopped mid-sentence and he couldn’t be bothered to care. Jean-Jacques stared while Christophe stood up, marched over to a window, and glared off into the distance.

_Rafael, answer me right now._

Silence.

“Is everything —“

He closed his eyes, sought out Rafael’s heartbeat, which was racing, reached for the window frame, for anything that might hold him up, might stop the treachery which had overtaken the floor and made the world tilt. There was something thrumming, like pain, _he’s hurt —_ and then something stabbing, sharp, deadly. This, even through Rafael’s attempt to spare him from it, was enough to send Christophe crashing to the floor. Dimly he recognized Jean-Jacques order for one of the medics, though for a moment he wasn’t in Vaux Romandith, he was off to the East, he was at the Cauldron, that was — _oh gods. Rafa, get out of there —_

“No.” He shook off every offer of help except for Jean-Jacques hands, and these he only used to get back to his feet, to blink rapidly, to try to get his bearings. “No.” He could still hear it, that heartbeat. As long as he could hear it he was not going to stay here, idle, while Rafael died _alone_ fleeing a dragon out in the wilderness. “I need to leave immediately.”

Breathing hurt. Christophe tried unsuccessfully to gain control over his lungs, to stop the little gasps that still shook him, to remember that his ribcage could not have possibly contracted like this.

“What happened?”

“Viktor. You have to call for Viktor. Tell him Yuuri has to come —”

“… I don’t understand.”

“Rafael is going to **_die,”_** Christophe snapped. _Idiot boy, trying to be a Prince, still trying to please me —_ whose fault was that, though?

_Rafa, answer me right now —_

_— ru—run.. ..ning —_

He’d never been so glad to hear such broken syllables. Something in Christophe’s chest eased just a little bit.

_Head north, I’m coming._

_t-too dan …— the cauld— it’s…_

_I know. Warn your companions if you must. I’m still coming._

He looked back at Jean-Jacques, tried to shrug off the new Prince’s palpable worry. “Call Viktor,” Christophe repeated, though the words felt clunky and slow to come in his mouth. Somewhere, Rafael was half-slung over one of the desert cats, and his mount was wounded and scared too. “… Tell him that Rafael thinks an eruption at the cauldron is likely, and that he’s just fought the dragon they saw in the desert.” He grabbed Jean-Jacques shoulders. “You have to convince him to bring Yuuri,” Christophe added, and he _knew_ how desperate he sounded, how wild-eyed he looked; could see himself in the reflection of Jean-Jacques’ irises this close. He had blue eyes. They were nothing like Viktor’s; the color of the Vaux Romandith lake instead of the clear blue of glaciers or seas.

“Please,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Make sure he brings Yuuri. Do this for me. I have to go.”

 

\- - -

 

_An afternoon in 930, II Age_

“Rafael.”

“Christophe. We keep meeting.”

 _Rafa, I’ll take the cats for water?_ Rafa. This time he’d come in with three other rangers on patrol, something Rafael had explained the last time he’d been to the oasis. _We got separated in the storm, they’ll show up in a day or two._

“Rafa?” Christophe prompted, absently, and gods, it was digging, wasn’t it? Rafael was so calm though, so placid, and he wanted to dig.

“What my friends call me,” said the ban side, and Christophe realized absently that he’d missed Rafael’s voice. It was a light tenor, but something about the cadence of his words was curiously melodic. The first time they’d met, he’d admitted to being angry at the stars, such a silly thing, and Rafael had told him their alternate histories for ages.

The ban side had not named their constellations after heroes. _That one’s the eagle and the serpent. Close to the horizon is the one-eared rabbit._ He’d listened to that voice for hours, and in the morning, the other rangers had indeed emerged from the shelter they’d taken during the sandstorm, and Rafael had left him without the sound of it, something Christophe had not even known he’d needed until the precise moment where he was left to deal with its absence.

“Friends,” Christophe repeated, and Rafael flashed him that subtle smile again.

“Surely even an aes sidhe can understand the concept.”

There it was, that playful edge which had caught his attention the first time around. Christophe grinned back, unrepentant. “ _Even an aes sidhe,”_ he mimicked. “Who’s the snob now, Rafa?” It fell so easily off his lips, and it was cheating, to recognize the little flicker of fondness that burst up in Rafael’s mien, but Christophe couldn’t help it.

“You caught me. What will you do now?”

“Beg you to stay for more than a day.” _Stay forever._ What a ridiculous thought that was, particularly about someone he could only barely say he knew. “I’m ruthless.”

Rafael laughed, which was music itself. “Yes,” he said, and now Christophe knew he was thinking about that night by the lake, about _towels,_ of all things. “I remember.”

 

\- - -

 

_Nine days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age_

He didn’t take the road. Once, Christophe had traveled all over the strange lands that made up the central border of all four kingdoms with Rafael, and in every year since he’d seen all of the major landmarks in his lover’s thoughts whenever they were apart: Rafael’s way of still telling stories, all these years later. He’d volunteered to ride out without knowing precisely what he was getting into, back then, impatient after a decade of drop-ins at A’ve Palmera, unpredictable, out of season: forever a surprise. These were wonderful, always; Rafael’s presence was curiously soothing, and his emotions never overwhelmed. They spoke together like equals and old friends, _easily,_ and Christophe had begun to compile a picture of Rafael the ban side.

It was mournfully incomplete, a list of facts: Rafael had two sisters, who were going to give him hell when they came of age and were sought for handfasting. His familiar — no, his _guardian,_ because that was the word he used — was a great horned owl, and his magic was like nothing Christophe had seen personally: alchemical, able to change one substance into another, glimmered the green of olives, showcased his subtle creativity every time he used it. His favorite constellation was the running puma, for no other reason than he liked the great cats of the desert. When he told stories he got a faraway look on his face that always made Christophe want to kiss him.

It was all rather like only ever eating the appetizer of some promised feast. One morning, back then, Rafael had looked back over his shoulder with such consideration, _longing,_ even, that the words had leapt from Christophe’s body as quickly as he thought them: _wait,_ he’d said. _I’m coming with you._

They’d kissed for the first time then, and the other two rangers had whooped around the campfire, because evidently they had known for a long time what Christophe had not, had even made bets. They measured the passing of that year by the moon, and at the end of the first one Christophe had hesitated in front of Rafael’s glowing hands, had known what he was offering. _There are things you should know about me,_ he’d insisted, because he’d done this once before, and it had been such a mistake, and surely he wasn’t worthy _._

There was something incredibly clarifying in being on the receiving end of Rafa’s perfect clarity. _There is nothing I need to know about you that I don’t already know,_ Rafael had said, open palms still outstretched. _The aes sidhe always linger overlong in the past._ He’d been observant, too. _You’re afraid to use your magic on me. I have no fear of it. Look at this. This is today._

Today, Rafa was somewhere in the steppes, and Christophe would be damned before he’d let the first person who’d ever given him permission to simply be himself perish alone.

He rode for two days with little sleep, following Rafael’s weakening heartbeat and the slender wisps of their bond, traveled through a brief, biting rainstorm, was hungry and shivering and cold when he finally found him but it didn’t matter. Rafael’d taken shelter in a cave, was hallucinating and nearly unconscious, and whenever Christophe looked at his mangled leg and the unnatural drape of his arm the whole world threatened to spin again.

“Help is coming,” he promised his husband with every fiber in his being, though he could do little other than hope this was, in fact, the case. The python twisted around Christophe’s shoulders as he settled in next to Rafael, linked their hands, let his magic _go._ Whatever it was Rafael had encountered had done more than crush bones; there was a deep void ripped through his aura, and what remained of his magic was weak, flickering. Christophe threw himself into it without hesitation. He let the python sweep away the feelings of pain, forcibly pulled anguish out of Rafael’s body and dissipated it. _Better?_

“When you wake up we’re going to have a discussion about the stupid things you don’t have to do to spare me.”

_a-m … a-wake_

“And in no fit state to talk, for once,” Christophe quipped without humor. Still, he sensed Rafael’s relief, encouraged it to flare up a little more brightly. Thought long and hard about how many times he’d fallen in love with this man. To the ban side, it wasn’t a one time act. Every day was new.

To the ban side, everything happened _now,_ and so Christophe and Rafael were still falling, were in a permanent free fall. He dug for it in the mix of their feelings, that love, felt no guilt whatsoever in redirecting all of Rafael’s attention to it. Christophe had the power to bear him into ecstasy if he willed it, and Rafael had once given him permission to use it to its fullest. He did so now because it was what both of them would've expected. “Now shut up and let me hold you.”

 

\- - -

 

_An evening in 941, II Age_

They were married on a full moon in one of the ban side villages at the southwestern edge of the steppes by a woman Christophe had learned was called _The Reaper_ by the rest of her tribe, a title that seemed to inspire both great honor and something that was not quite fear. Awe, perhaps, in the dread sense of the word. Whatever else it meant, she bore some responsibility her peers considered holy.

Rafael had promised to explain it to him later. _It’s a ban side thing,_ he’d teased. _You’re not one of us._

“Yet,” Christophe had reminded him then, with a pointed look towards the setting sun, and Rafa laughed one of his melodic laughs. _Yet,_ he agreed. There was no sound on earth that was more beautiful than that voice echoing the vows at the Reaper’s prompt while the ban side’s family tied the knots around their hands.

_You cannot possess me for I belong to myself._

“You cannot possess me for I belong to myself.”

_But while we both wish it, I give you that which is mine to give._

“But while we both wish it, I give you that which is mine to give.”

_You cannot command me, for I am a free person._

“You cannot command me, for I am a free person.”

_But I shall serve you in those ways you require,_

“But I shall serve you in those ways you require,”

_and the honeycomb will taste sweeter coming from my hand._

“and the honeycomb will taste sweeter coming from my hand.”

_I pledge to you that yours will be the name I cry aloud in the night, and the eyes into which I smile in the morning.I shall be a shield for your back and you for mine. I shall honor you above all others, and when we quarrel we shall do so in private and tell no strangers our grievances._

_I pledge to you my living and my dying, each equally in your care._

_This is my wedding vow to you. This is the marriage of equals._

“This is my wedding vow to you.”

“… this is the marriage of equals.”

 

\- - -

 

_Nine days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age_

Viktor had not slept, and neither had Yuuri, and neither had Vicchan, flying day and night on the rush of Yuuri’s magic, which kept restoring him every time he felt like hunger or exhaustion were going to somehow intervene. Yuuri said little and thought less, steadfast, his gaze fixed on the Western horizon as they flew. Only briefly did he point out a landmark at the edge of the canyon as he crossed it. _The flame of the east. The phoenix came to me there._

Then he’d needed to turn them northwards, cutting across towards the oasis. It was best to keep the cauldron little more than a distant column of thin smoke, which made for an unsettling landmark, a reminder that there was still other business to attend to. Viktor turned to examine it often, shared his thoughts freely with Lilia as they flew.

_The cauldron has not erupted in this age, nor particularly recently in the last. I believe the last time was shortly after the creation of the mages._

_What would happen if it did?_

_I’ll go look in the archives._

_Have father prepare the council of the Princes, please. A’ve Palmera still has a wayseeing stone._

_Be careful, Vitya._

_Of course, mother._

Viktor tensed suddenly, his attention caught by a rock formation off to their right. He felt compelled to go visit it, curiously so, and because he'd only ever been compelled in one year that _still_ remained crystal clear in his memory, he was reasonably sure he knew who to blame for his sudden inspiration. “Yuuri, head that way.”

“It’ll take us off course, it’s still at least a day to A’ve Palmera …”

“I don’t think they made A’ve Palmera,” Viktor murmured, a small muscle in his cheek twitching. _I know what it feels like to be compelled by Christophe, and right now Christophe would very much like for us to make for those rocks._

Yuuri didn’t particularly like that, but he obeyed, turning the eagle that way. “Tell him to cut it out,” he grumbled, though Viktor had no way of doing so, neither of them did. Nonetheless, Viktor exhaled in relief as the feeling abated, replaced by a very brief flicker of something that felt nearly _apologetic._ As they flew closer, two desert cats looked up from their rest on a ledge, one of them still bearing the visible stripes of a wound. They seemed to be keeping watch in front of a hollow part of the rock formation, a shallow cave, enough to provide relief from the elements. _… I see. They didn’t get that far._

Viktor dismounted first and gave Yuuri his hand as they arrived.

Christophe didn’t get up, couldn’t; barely had the energy. “… thank the gods,” he said, voice little more than a whisper. “I wasn’t sure that would be enough to catch you.”

Viktor knew what he saw; Christophe, on the very last edges of his strength, and the man who he presumed was Rafael, who looked to be on death’s door. Stranger than that was the state of one of Rafael’s hands, and his left leg: they looked to be wooden, mangled into a shape that hardly resembled legs or arms. He wondered, suddenly, what it was Yuuri saw, with two lives bound together like this, somewhere near the precipice of death.

“I had him do that once he had enough magic to manage it,” Christophe explained weakly. “His magic … it changes things. It’s less painful.”

“And you’re suppressing the pain, too.” Viktor assumed. He said it without any trace of a grudge, and perfect awareness that in the same situation he would’ve made the same choice without regret.

“Yes.”

Yuuri stepped forward then and knelt gingerly next to them both. “… Christophe, Seung-gil would want me to ask,” he said, after a cursory inspection, sweeping the back of his hand over the Ranger’s forehead, and then checking his pulse. “Is it his time?”

Christophe visibly flinched, as though Yuuri had struck him, and for a moment it looked as though he might weep. “Only the Reaper knows his own time,” he murmured carefully, forcing himself back into some semblance of self-control. “None of them do.”

He’d asked Rafael so many times. _How do you know? How can you tell?_

For years Rafael had tried and failed to put the process into words, had attempted to explain something indescribable. It had been strange and poetic, part of a world Christophe wasn’t sure he could ever hope to understand. There was some great mystery beyond, and the ban side got to see glimpses of it, sometimes, like looking through a parting fog.

He had never understood it until they’d gone back to the village one year and Rafael had looked at his own father and _known_ and Christophe had felt the edge of that knowing reverberate through every ounce of his being, had realized why it couldn’t be put into words.

The end of a lifetime was a _feeling_.

Yuuri hesitated, and Christophe looked at him, steadfast. “Yuuri,” he said, firmly, “they made me one of them when I married him.” He looked at Rafa, and counted his breaths, closed his eyes. Today the world was crystal clear and this pain was obvious to him.

The light was no mystery today. This was not how it felt to lose Rafael. “… I am telling you that it is not his time.”

Yuuri looked at him for what felt like an eternity, and then golden magic swirled around his hands as the phoenix emerged overhead, and settled on his shoulder, young and glorious, with a wide sweep of tail feathers that Viktor was convinced was just for show. “Wake him up and make him change his limbs back,” he said.

_Rafa, my darling._

_… y… you c-call…lled?_

_I told you help was coming, dearest. Do me a favor and be a real boy again, instead of a tree? Our guests think it's very strange._

_c… can’t h-have .. that …_

_Agreed._

Viktor’s gaze never left them, watched as gold and purple and green wove together, reliving from the outside this time what had almost been another ending on the opposite end of the ranges, far to the south.

_This is what you did for me._

_Yes._

_Was it my time?_

_No._ Yuuri glanced up at him from amidst the settling of magic, as Rafa deeply rasped for breath. … _The phoenix chooses his time,_ he thought, _and you belong to the phoenix._

Viktor’s eyes shifted and shone as he let the words sink in. _Gods_ , Yakov had it all wrong; worried about the indignity of his Prince son marrying a halfling, tying the long span of his life to a weaker one to settle somewhere inbetween. The real indignity was Yuuri, who would someday choose death when he was ready for it, and no sooner, sharing the privilege, something Viktor could never possibly hope to repay but would spend the rest of his life attempting to earn, however long they decided that would be … _I didn’t then._

 _Evidently Seung-gil is smarter than I am._ Yuuri’s smile was momentarily self-deprecating as he looked up at Viktor. _He made me choose, before we left Shen-Osheth._

Well, Viktor thought, chuckling bleakly through the threat of his own tears, curious things, prompted by something much bigger than sadness, it was about time the Reaper had at least one redeeming point. “You’re at least a dozen times more likable than the reaper is, if it’s any consolation.”

“Seung-gil is perfectly tolerable,” chimed in a new voice, Rafael’s, albeit thin and raspy, and Christophe gave an incredulous laugh in response, and then leaned over to kiss him.

“Spoken by the ranger who’s just been a perfect idiot,” he said. “Can you ride?”

“Poorly,” Rafa confirmed, as he gingerly reached for the nearby wall, and began to carefully get to his feet. Christophe helped him, sweeping an arm under the brunette’s shoulders. “Which is to say I’ll be almost as good as you.”

This time it was Viktor’s turn to laugh, though he was surprised to have done so. Once he’d come to A’ve Palmera with Yuuri in tow and it had been Christophe who’d spoken to him about the great ironies of love. “I like him already, Christophe.”

“Rafa is perfectly tolerable,” Christophe echoed, and Yuuri shook his head.

“Get your bearings. I’ll tend to your mount.”  
  
"We saw the smoke from the cauldron on the way in," Viktor said, and he looked that way even though the wall of the cave obscured his view towards the south. "The council of princes will convene as soon as we get to A've Palmera."

Rafael stopped, tilted his head, suddenly curious. "You intend to do something about it, then?"

"It is not yet clear to me whether or not there  _is_ anything that can or should be done. I suspect you and Otabek will have to tell me all about it."

This was not the Prince he'd heard stories of, stubborn and set in the ways of the aes sidhe. Not the son of Yakov that Christophe had once told him about, bound by obligations to warriors long since dead. Rafael had sensed the changes, heard of them, even, from Christophe while Christophe made for a longer stay in Vaux Romandith. It was different to see it here and now, face to face.

 _This_ was a wisdom older than the mistakes of the first age, in its infancy, at least. Perhaps that was Otabek's doing. Or had it been the work of the phoenix? "... Otabek's _here?_ "

"He rides from Hasetsuil," Viktor confirmed, "with my brother."

 _With,_ echoed Christophe, pointedly, and then he gave Rafael a push out towards where the cats were waiting, tended by Yuuri. Rafael paused for a moment, considered all of this, and gave an incredulous chuckle. 

_Stranger things have happened._

_Yes,_ Christophe agreed, thinking of that one night all those years ago, when Rafael had appeared in a pond he'd made the mistake of thinking  _belonged_ to him. That was not the way of things; he understood now. Places and people were not meant to be possessed; like life, they only came when given, like gifts.   
  
"And more miraculous, besides."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter wrote itself while listening to this song on repeat, thanks to this appearing on my dash:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilqbhEYE_Ek


	24. we never belonged to you

 

_Ten days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age_

As they rode into A’ve Palmera, weary and exhausted, Christophe barely accepted the welcome of the mages of his house. His priority was helping Rafael into the villa, shuffling his lover away for much-needed rest. “The mages can show you where the stone is,” he murmured to Viktor in passing, pausing only for a moment. Once he’d been the sort of person who’d given Viktor advice and been heeded. It was difficult to know whether or not that was still the case. “… no good decision is made unrested, Vitya,” Christophe warned, the nickname at once familiar and not, when it fell from his lips.

Yet it had been an easy habit to resume, and the advice itself was sound.

“Take the room you used last time,” Christophe added, and then he and Rafael were off, and Viktor and Yuuri were left in villa’s entryway. There Viktor hesitated for a moment, looking at Christophe’s retreating back, before he, too, trudged off towards the guest wing. Yuuri felt him reaching out for the Northerners, swept into a channel of thoughts amongst the royal aes sidhe that he still felt like an interloper in.

 _We’ve arrived at A’ve Palmera. The situation is …_ Viktor paused, chose his words with care. _… tenuous. Yura, when will you get here?_

_Beka says another day and a half, if we hurry. Tell your halfling that his sister’s been very helpful._

_I can hear you,_ thought Yuuri, slightly amused, and Viktor turned to look at him with a brief glimmer of bemusement, little more than a wavering candle’s worth, or a lightning strike: there and then gone again.

Lilia added: _I’ve been doing some reading. The last eruption, as I thought, was in the first age._

 _And?_ Yakov’s voice, even in this context, still felt like stones tumbling through the collective consciousness: hard edges that promised damage, left bruises.

 _It was … fairly catastrophic, as far as I can tell. Ancient ban side settlements south of A’ve Palmera were completely destroyed with relatively little warning. They are not students of elemental magic and I can’t tell if anyone made use of any wayseeing stones — the fires raged for weeks before help arrived. Some accounts seem to indicate something like a drought, or perhaps the smoke lingered overlong, it’s a little difficult to say. It may have helped transform the landscape to make it as inhospitable as it is today._ Doubt was an uncommon note, in Lilia’s tone, and she subsequently confessed to its cause: … _Most of the work was only transcribed by one or two aes sidhe, and they aren’t contemporary._

 _The banshees never do write anything down properly,_ Yakov grumbled, which might’ve made Yuuri laugh, dryly and without humor, if he wasn’t so, so tired. The word were at once a compliment to Lilia’s research and an insult to the ban side that Yakov still clearly misunderstood. Old habits were hard to break.

 _We’ll discuss it with the Princes when the council convenes,_ Viktor promised. He seemed to know to expect the knock that followed them, just a few moments after their arrival in the guest room; accepted a spare set of robes from one of Christophe’s mages and then shut the door. … _Right now we need rest. Mother, will you send word to Vaux Romandith that the Steward of A’ve Palmera is back in his residence and has arrived safely? Jean-Jacques will be anxious to hear from us._

_I will do so._

_Thank you._ Viktor turned his attention away from them, and then reached for Yuuri, tilted his head down for the softest kiss. He began, without preamble, to help him undress. “Do you have any idea,” the prince asked quietly, as his fingers drifted over collarbones, down muscle, “… how much of a miracle you are?”

“I’m nothing special,” Yuuri mumbled, shaking his head with a self-deprecating smile as he reached for the hem of Viktor’s shirt, drew the tunic up and over the prince’s head. Tonight the challenge would be to not fall asleep in the baths, boneless and tired, and as tempting as it was to just climb into bed and sleep he couldn’t quite manage it. There were simple desires left to indulge: he wanted to shake the dust off, wanted to give into the needs of his hands, undo Viktor’s braids and then pick the tangles out of his hair. It’d be reassuring, simple, sweet. “I assure you.”

Viktor shook his head, led them over to the tub, drew water. For a moment Yuuri thought he might’ve left things there, agreed to disagree, but he should’ve known better: Viktor never settled. “… We believe the gods left this place to its own devices, for better or worse, long ago. That’s part of the story of the havens, the last stop before one travels back to them,” he murmured, and reached for Yuuri, who came close, who settled so perfectly and comfortably within the circle of his arms that Viktor was sure this was what they’d been made for. “I don’t know what I believe about all that,” he admitted, because if there were gods and they’d ever been good then there was no explanation for the present state of the world; if they’d been bad, there was no reason for Yuuri to be with him now, a good and perfect gift. “… but I’m reasonably sure whatever molds they left were broken with you.”

It was hard to argue, hard to tell Viktor he was wrong, when his certainty glimmered across their bond together, nearly enough to convince Yuuri that he was telling the truth. Nearly enough to see himself through Viktor’s eyes. It was entirely beyond Yuuri to make Viktor, of all people, a liar.

He’d have to live up to it. He fell asleep promising to do that, tired but safe and oh-so-warm, drinking up the slow dribble of Viktor’s sleepy kisses like honey, like ambrosia.

 

\- - -

 

“… I told him it wasn’t your time,” Christophe admitted, putting together a poultice of strong, sweet-smelling herbs to apply to the last of Rafael’s bruises, to administer to all of the the places where he still vividly recalled wounds.

Rafael laid back on their bed, propped up one elbow, as though he didn’t entirely trust the arm that had taken the brunt of the blow, deflecting the sharp crack of the dragon’s tail. “Did you, now?” He asked, closing his eyes for a moment. Christophe paused, fully aware of Rafael’s inspection of his thoughts and his motives within their bond. It was intimate, this searching, and he drank in the flicker of thoughtfulness in Rafael’s mien, smiled at the precise moment that it turned into subtle approval. “You wouldn’t have lied,” Rafa hummed, almost to himself, and the ranger didn’t need to explain why that mattered to him: why it was important that the aes sidhe he’d let get so intwined in every aspect of his life honored even the final aspects of it. “You told the truth as you saw it. I suppose I should thank you for that.”

“Thank me next time by not shutting me out,” Christophe replied, momentarily serious as he began to apply the salve. “When I said I pledged my living and my dying I meant it.”

 _It seemed kinder to keep you from harm,_ Rafael thought, but Christophe could sense the apology beneath, Rafa’s shifting assent to his request, framed up by newfound respect and the certainty that had Christophe believed it was his time to die he would’ve said so, and done what the aes sidhe were so terrible at: would have embraced the art of letting go.

 _It’s much too late to protect me from what you are,_ Christophe added, and when he was done with the salves, satisfied with what medicine had to offer, he stretched out nearby and let Rafael creep closer, swept his fingers through the ranger’s brown curls. _Or you from me._

 _I don’t require any protecting from you,_ Rafael teased, turning his head ever so slightly to press his lips to Christophe’s jaw, curling into his body heat. He’d missed this; Viktor’s reappearance had sent Christophe far from A’ve Palmera, which meant that he’d come back to the villa more than once to find their bedroom empty, to sleep alone. It was something he’d gotten used to out in the wilderness, but didn’t like here. Here, they were supposed to be together. … _Unless we’re talking about towels._

His lover was unrepentant, with dangerous hands, and a sweep of feelings that could get them into trouble if he wasn’t particularly careful. Purple magic hovered in the air, slithered across Rafael’s exposed skin, protective and possessive all at once, and then it settled into him with the radiant warmth of summer sun. “I prefer you naked, it’s true.”

Christophe didn’t need to see Rafael’s answering smirk in the dark, but he _had_ needed to hear the soft sound of his laughter, short and quiet as it may have been. “Ruthless,” he hummed, fondly, which was enough for Christophe to push aside his worries long enough to sleep. It was not yet tomorrow. Rafael had taught him about all of the crucial moments that convened in the present, and Rafael was here, now.

 

\- - -

 

_Eleven days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age_

_Sickening._ That was the word Yuri might’ve used, if asked to describe what it was like to look on his brother and Yuuri curled up in bed. The halfling lay on his back with Viktor curled into his side, his brother’s head pillowed on the fire mage’s chest as though he’d fallen asleep listening to his heartbeat. Yuuri’s fingers were still tangled in the platinum silk of the prince’s hair, and there was a softness between them that Yuri didn’t have the right words for. He might have shouted his disdain for the entire situation, except for the tranquility of Viktor’s face, a comfort and contentment that he’d never really gotten a chance to witness.

Bliss was what Viktor might have called it, but Viktor was clearly a sentimental idiot.

“Oi,” the blonde snapped, and reached over to shake his older brother’s shoulders. “You going to sleep all day, or what?”

_Yura …_

“Do you know how many people I had to boss around to get up here?” Viktor was pretty sure the answer was two, because the entire oasis ran on a mere fraction of what had once comprised Christophe’s court, but to Yuri it seemed to be the principle of the thing that mattered more than its precise details. “ _Sleeping royalty_ my arse,” he added, as Viktor stirred and rubbed the sleep from his eyes; Yuuri, disturbed, sat up and did the same. “They lectured me about your privacy! You know when _privacy_ would’ve been useful? When you were busy falling in love with this other idiot back at solstice in Vaux Romandith, when we were all still _sharing a tent_.”

“That’ll do, Yura.” If he hadn’t been awake before, Viktor certainly was now. Next to him Yuuri yawned and stretched, which was the very definition of a distraction: the arch of his spine, the graceful reach of his arms …

“Hey, pay attention!” Yuri’s eyes crinkled subtly around their edges but he did not smile. “Beka went to go get Christophe, I guess. Do you want me to start making the calls for council?”

“Please,” said Viktor, calmly. “We’ll be there soon.”

Yuri wagged a finger in his face. “Reminder, in case you’ve forgotten: everyone Beka loves is in danger right now. No morning funny business. I’ll _know.”_

 _I have some semblance of self-control, Yura,_ Viktor snapped back, though even he knew what the blonde meant. There was something about Yuuri in the mornings. The light of sunrise favored him.

 _It’s nearly noon, moron,_ his brother scoffed. _See you in a bit._

 

\- - -

 

Otabek had not bothered to have a conversation with any of Christophe’s staff. Instead, he’d climbed up to the balcony and then helped himself in via a window, which seemed easier. Ideally this time Rafael and the aes sidhe would be decent, at least. The last time he’d played this little prank, it had yielded embarrassing results, nearly as embarrassing as other memories he had of this same place, growing up, of being a wayward teen whose hair Rafael patiently held back while he puked, drunk on far too much thistle-wine at one of the festivals of the moon. How many times had he been here, to this oasis, before running off to join Yakov’s court?

Too many to count, perhaps. He had never ridden the ranges _with_ Rafael; had grown up in a different village, but sometimes their paths intersected, and the patrols of his family swept through A’ve Palmera in seasons when both Christophe and Rafael were in residence. The two of them together were always in good spirits, and they knew exactly how to entertain. There had been something about watching them, back when he’d been an adolescent, something that had made him think about the sort of person he wanted to be, someday; someone as assured as Rafa, as willing to come into the world just the way it was and exist. Someone who could love the way Rafael loved, with easy, languid grace, in a way that could nearly be called careless and _not_ be an insult.

And not just that. Together, Christophe and Rafael challenged every conventional thought. When had an aes sidhe last loved a ban side so fully? The stories hardly spoke of it. Yet Christophe and Rafael were real, and what was between them was real, and when he’d been a boy he’d demanded answers from Rafa, because the aes sidhe had ruined the whole world once, hadn’t they?

 _Maybe they did,_ Rafa had said, with all of his easy wisdom, able to move through the world with such perfect insight and clarity that Beka had envied him, growing up. _But to hold the actions of people who died before Christophe was even born against him doesn’t seem like something we should do, don’t you think?_

_What do you mean?_

_I mean that to harbor that kind of resentment is to live in the past, which isn’t our way. When you look on him with the eyes of the present, what do you see now?_

All moments were crucial moments. The idea of their reconciliation had stayed with him for years, and when he’d come to the conclusion that the situation at the cauldron was unsustainable, that carrying on herding revenants for another ten centuries wasn’t going to keep the ranges safe, Otabek had turned his back on all the things he’d thought he’d known and marched steadily north with one aim in mind: to learn to see the high elves the way Rafael could, for who they were now, not what their ancestors had been. For that, he now had Yuri’s heartbeat echoing faintly beyond his own whenever he thought of the blonde, which wasn’t quite always, but often, frequent enough to be unsettling because when he’d set out for the north, _Yura_ had not been what he’d had in mind.

More importantly, though, he’d seen the whispers of smoke from the cauldron with his own eyes, knew what that meant. “Rafa,” Otabek murmured, reaching for his mentor’s shoulder, and then, after a moment, also for Christophe’s, because Christophe had been one of them for decades now, “Christophe, wake up.”

Christophe came to first, sleepy, confused, and then he’d flashed that dangerous grin of his, made his jokes and laughed into the promise of darkness. “Honey, wake up,” he cooed at Rafael, batting his eyelashes. “The prodigal son returns.”

 

\- - -

 

They met together in an alcove on the second floor, loosely gathered around the faint glow of the wayseeing stone. Viktor moved towards his brother, in the middle, and Otabek found himself gravitating towards Seung-gil, who’d silently chosen a place near the windows. He was followed by Rafael and Christophe, and so together they made for a cluster of ban side, unexpected for this type of council. Yuuri lingered a little ways behind the two princes, near his sister, and though the two of them had each tried to pretend that they weren’t deeply relieved to see each other, they certainly hadn’t managed to fool Christophe in the slightest: the two siblings stood shoulder-to-shoulder, touching just enough to be reassured that they’d made their dangerous flights successfully and without incident.

Yuri had been the one to trigger the chain of summons that linked the other five stones together; first he’d called to Lilia, in Ast Petyriel, and the chain had continued onwards from there, alerting Yakov in the high alcazar of Mosciren, who’d thundered for Jean-Jacques in the great heartwoods of Vaux Romandith. Jean-Jacques, in turn, activated the call for Guang Hong in the council of Shen-Osheth, and Guang Hong had turned his own thoughts East, until Minako answered for Hasetsuil.

“Good,” Yakov said brusquely, “you’re all here. High Prince Viktor, you requested this summons. The council will hear your business.”

“… About two days ago we received word of trouble at the cauldron,” Viktor explained. “Yuri and I had just completed the Wheel in Hasetsuil when B — when Otabek, who is a member of the Northern Court and one of the ban side Rangers — heard the song of one of his tribe on the western wind and suggested we return to the village. His insight proved correct: Jean-Jacques had activated the stone at Vaux Romandith, and was waiting with Minako to inform us that he, too, had heard of trouble via the steward of A’ve Palmera …”

“The steward of A’ve Palmera?” Guang Hong echoed, to which Christophe stepped forward, more into view, and flashed a wry grin.

“Present and accounted for,” he chirped, and drank in the younger Prince’s surprise with wry bemusement. “That’s unbecoming, Guang Hong, I’ve been gone, not dead…”

“Your exile has not cured you of speaking out of turn,” Yakov muttered. “Among many other bad habits.”

“Though perhaps he should speak,” Viktor interjected carefully, before any of the arguing could get worse, “… if only to introduce the ranger whose story it is to tell.”

“I will do so gladly,” Christophe murmured graciously. “Albeit with some regret. I wish he had a different tale to spin. Like Otabek, Rafael is a Captain of the Rangers, and he’s the one who went to investigate.” He glanced backwards at the brunette, who had observed the whole exchange thus far with absent interest, and smiled subtly. “I suppose I ought to vouch for his intelligence and courage, or tell you of the strength of his character, but he did marry me, so …”

“With no regrets. Let’s not waste time,” Rafael added, as he stepped towards the stone. Viktor stepped back to make room, and fell out of the picture it presented in the five other cities. “Typically I travel with two others across the northern part of the ranges; we travel in a loop from A’ve Palmera south to the cauldron, back up through the outpost and again at the oasis; looking for revenants, usually, trying to keep them contained and away from the borders. Five days ago the steppes were shaken by an earthquake, which is not uncommon, but the aftershocks didn’t cease, and a day afterwards I thought I detected a trace of smoke off to the south. Traveling to the cauldron itself is treacherous, and when we arrived we were greeted by two terrible pieces of news: the fresh simmering of the caldera, and a trail of magma, and an injured dragon, nesting there. I … distracted it long enough for my companions to each make for the outposts to carry news, so that our people might be prepared …”

“What is _that thing,_ anyway?” Yuri asked, suddenly, recalling the giant shadow that had overtaken him on the desert road, and trying but failing to repress a sudden shiver when he remembered the way Viktor had thrown himself in front of it.

“I am not sure. I think that question is perhaps best directed to Otabek. He has as much experience with the cauldron as anyone, by now…”

Otabek? Otabek _knew?_ Yuri turned to look at him, unable to hide a subtle frown. “… Beka?”

“I’m not completely convinced I know either,” Otabek murmured, somewhat reluctantly.

“You must have seen something,” Rafael encouraged quietly. “What else made you ride for the north?”

“Please, Otabek.” Lilia’s voice was determined. “I have little knowledge of these matters. Even your suspicions may prove useful.”

He sighed. “… My family has watched the southern ranges for generations,” Otabek explained, in his stoic, quiet way. “Growing up I struggled to put aside my sense that something is not right with the central lands … all of our legends say that the cauldron is the font of creation, and yet it’s blighted land, still devastated from the first age, and it feels … it feels sick, to me. After a thousand years you’d think something might finally grow on those slopes but nothing ever does. When I got strong enough I took more patrols to monitor it, thought I might figure something out. I came to the conclusion that the efforts of the Rangers, as they currently are, might be … well, they’re containing it, this illness. But I think they’ll ultimately prove futile. We cannot hold these things back forever.” He glanced into the stone for a moment, studying Yakov and Lilia’s stern faces, reflected back, and then looked away from them to study Yuri instead. At this precise moment the blonde was doing a remarkable job of imitating his two parents, watching him with a neutral, cool expression. “In all of our stories the aes sidhe are to blame,” Otabek admitted softly. “Over-eager, over-reaching, too determined to leave their mark on the world. Yet one of them had handfasted my mentor, before I was even born, was mischievous and kind, too complex a figure for the simplicity of the old stories. So I left, thinking I might get the contradiction square in my own mind, learn for myself what the people who I supposed were my enemies were like.”

Yakov’s eyes narrowed ominously. “You came to the Northern court asking to serve it convinced that we were enemies?” He asked.

“Please don’t insult us both by pretending you did not consider the possibility when you agreed,” Otabek replied swiftly. “I can suffer the discourtesy but the rest of the courts are perfectly aware their King is not an idiot.”

“… The insolence of the young, in this age,” Yakov grumbled, but he waved a hand, dismissive. The point was not _false._ “My son asked you about the dragon.”

“In our stories, the revenants are leftover from the first age, the untended guardians of magic that there are no longer enough ban side to possess. If that is correct, then …”

“Then what?”

“Then the dragon may be part of a legacy Otabek is familiar with,” Seung-gil supplied calmly, filling in the spaces of Otabek’s hesitation with calm fact. The Ranger stood silent while he spoke, clenching his fists until his nails bit into his palms. “Its similarity to the wyvern is too marked to mistake.”

“There was a great warrior from our council who was killed in battle just before the end of the great war of the first age,” Otabek added finally, though he made himself look away, fixing his eyes on the distant horizon through the dusty windowpanes. “… They say we sang of his loss for months. His death made way for the pax.”

Rafael chimed in, moving forward to clap Otabek on the shoulder. “He was Otabek’s great-great-Uncle,” he explained, gently, and Otabek looked up at him with subtle gratitude. How could he have explained it, the threadbare wish that all this might be remade new, the unintended burden left by this ancient legacy that threatened to spoil every landscape he held dear?

Yet to kill it would be to kill a part of himself, in some strange way.

“In all of the songs his spirit guardian is a great dragon.”

“Another shadowmancer?” Viktor inquired.

“… Yes, but not just. Rather more like your magic, if the stories are true.” Otabek looked up and met Viktor’s gaze. “Chaos. Entropy.”

An understanding passed between them then, and Viktor bowed his head, dropping his chin into a waiting palm with a thoughtful expression. “Ah,” he said. “That’s unfortunate.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Jean-Jacques piped in, shaking his head slowly.

“I think I do.” Yuri’s voice was quiet, calm. Otabek turned to look at him, exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “The revenants are corrupted original magicks, echoes of famili — guardians — things that somehow got twisted and corrupted in the war. One of them was this … chaos, the stuff that makes things fall apart, and it’s been at the cauldron this whole time, brewing, falling apart more, getting worse for centuries, gathering strength but in the wrong way … And now it’s corporeal, it’s a dragon again, but we’ve hurt it and it’s gone back to the only place it knows to lick its wounds. But it’s in the worst possible place for magic like that to be out of control. It’s been making the cauldron more volatile all along just by existing, all these years. Not because it’s malicious. Because it doesn’t know any better. Now it’s hurt, too. It’s lashing out. That’s what’s triggering the caldera to be active again, after all this time. That imbalance.”

“You mean to say magic is sentient?”

Rafael seemed to find that question amusing, and he cast a smart glance towards Jean-Jacques. “What did you think it was, all this time? Happy coincidence, to get something so suited to you?”

“This one’s clever,” Lilia murmured with what was nearly a smile as she looked through the stone at Rafael, and Jean-Jacques flushed in response, expression thoughtful while he contemplated the idea.

“We have to get rid of it,” Yakov declared. “I’ll seal the whole place up in stone if I must.”

“Yes,” Seung-gil muttered finally, his cold voice dripping with sarcasm, “you go and do that. Surefire way to die in a blaze of glory, at least, at the end of your long and ridiculous reign …”

“Excuse you?”

“It’s very like an aes sidhe to bury a problem and declare it gone,” Seung-gil snapped. “You can’t make the cauldron bend to your will. I have terrible news for you, Yakov: the world does not think it _has_ a King. These things are _ancient_. They do not yield. They will not simply go into the veil because you march in and order them to.”

“… Is that what they need?” Yuuri asked suddenly, before Yakov could interject in fury. “Are they supposed to go beyond?”

“We’re not going up there to murder revenants,” Seung-gil said coldly. “We are _not._ ”

“That isn’t what he’s suggesting,” Viktor replied swiftly, with ice in his tone. “You of all people ought to know better.”

A thoughtful silence descended over the gathered room, and it spread across five different cities before Yuri looked up suddenly, and fixed his eyes on the halfling. “What did you do to them,” he asked suddenly. “What did you do when we were on the sunset road?”

“That was …” Yuuri glanced at the wayseeing stone, somewhat uncomfortable; Guang Hong and Jean-Jacques had not yet been sworn into his secret; did not know what had transpired over Samhain and thereafter. Viktor understood without words; moved behind him and draped his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders, reassuring and solid. _The princes will not betray you. I will see to it._ “… that was entirely the phoenix,” Yuuri said softly, relaxing into Viktor’s chest.

“Phoenix?” Guang Hong asked, which Yuri ignored, waving off the detail for now. It was a story that could be told some other time. 

“Could you do it again?”

“… Lost me again,” Jean-Jacques pointed out, and Viktor looked down at Yuuri for a long moment, solemn, ignored the way the rest of the room, one by one, arrived at the same conclusion Yuri had come to. Yuuri shrank away from their gazes, looked down at the floor, and Viktor turned him around slowly, tilted his chin up, sought out his gaze.

 _I want you to understand that you can tell them no,_ he thought fondly, sweeping a hand along Yuuri’s cheekbones. _That you have every right to be frightened or to think it’s too big a task._

_Viktor, I —_

_If, on the other hand, you’re willing to try, I want you to know something else, too:_

_What?_

_Everyone here will be with you._

_But it’s so dangerous, they could all get hurt ..._

_It’s too big a task to take on all alone, Yuuri._ “We promised to share each other’s burdens, did we not?” Viktor asked quietly, ignoring the gathered stares around them.

“I don’t know,” Yuuri admitted finally, and he looked away from Viktor finally, turned to meet Yuri’s sharp stare. This was easier, somehow, than facing into the council of princes assembled in the wayseeing stone, easier than promising the collection of ban side false hope. “… but I’d be willing to try.”

“We’re coming with you.” Christophe was the one who spoke, but it was Otabek who moved, who took a knee, followed by Rafael, and then Christophe. Seung-gil stared at the three of them for a moment, then slowly did the same.

“In this matter,” Otabek said quietly, directing the words to Yuuri, “… the ban side are at your service.”

“I’m coming, too.” Mari chimed in, reaching over to clasp her brother’s shoulder. “Mom and Dad’ll never forgive me if you do something stupid and get yourself properly killed.”

“Get up, all of you,” Yuri muttered, staring at the ban side. Even though he recognized the gesture had been directed towards Yuuri and not to his brother, he knew how costly it was to make. The blonde extended a hand to Otabek, who they both knew didn’t need the actual help coming to his feet. What was it Viktor had said once? Ah, yes. “You bow to no one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what in exposition
> 
>  
> 
> i buried myself in dialogue this chapter so the actual cauldron stuff will now be ch 25, which means you do, in fact, get a ch 26 ♡


	25. the grasses light up with forgiveness

 

The Prince’s council went on for hours, after that, and much more seriously, too: for the first time, Yuuri saw Yakov’s hard edges reflected in Viktor’s blue eyes. The two of them together were ruthless tacticians. It was a part of Viktor that he did not seem to relish using, cold and a little bit savage, but given the circumstances, neither did he flinch. They settled on a strategy that would rely upon the Princes of the South and the West creating a diversion in the desert, something to draw some of the revenants back away from the center of the ranges, enough to allow a small party time to reach the cauldron.

Otabek and Rafael were confident in their ability to get there, albeit somewhat wary of the two Northern princes who insisted they’d be coming along, the most direct descendants of the aes sidhe the revenants were so bent against. “… Besides, at the risk of stating the obvious,” Rafael murmured wryly, “it’s _very_ hot there.” This he directed at Viktor, who hesitated long enough to consider the facts, remembering the last time he’d disregarded this advice, and then waved them off nonetheless.

“We will all be at risk,” he said quietly. There were other obvious things that Rafael wasn’t saying, Viktor knew, like whether or not the decision to come along was objectively the best one. Last time he’d been heartsick and confused, arrogant, unaware: ready to put as much distance between him and Yuuri as possible after the fires of Beltane.

This was very, very different.

Viktor was not sure he was capable of leaving Yuuri to this task by himself; fortunately, he did not think it was the wiser course of action in any case. He was the son of Lilia and Yakov, currently the most accomplished mage in all four of the realms, coming up into his prime at the same time that his father’s powers threatened to wane. Besides, the odds were terribly stacked. He had a way of evening them. “You will need what luck I can give you.”

“Try not to jump in front of the dragon this time, if I’m fighting it, idiot,” Yuri muttered, to which Otabek merely studied him in silent but clear surprise. “Don’t,” the younger prince warned Beka, with narrowed eyes. _Don’t make me say it._ There were things that were easier when they weren’t said out loud, because then they were witnessed, had meaning beyond just the thought of them, which was dangerous enough, and _if you’re going then of course I’m going_ was one of those things. Viktor’s attending was an objective fact, logical. Yuri couldn’t manage a corporeal familiar. Still: he was coming, and that was that.

“Yuuri is the only person who needs to engage the dragon,” Viktor said, and that he could say so as smoothly and objectively as he did reminded Yuri that his brother hadn’t gone entirely soft in the wake of his whirlwind romance. He volunteered his husband for the task in perfect, steely calm. Still, Viktor’s blue eyes trailed sidelong, and in so doing he gave himself away: he _could_ say the words. He also _hated_ them. “The rest of us are there to try to ensure that outcome occurs, and nothing else.”

By the time the council drew closed even Seung-gil seemed to be regarding Viktor in a new light, subtly and begrudgingly impressed, even if he’d subsequently pulled Yuuri aside to give him a warning:

_If you put yourself in mortal peril I will not be able to spare you from actual death._

From Seung-gil, this was almost something like caring, even if it wasn’t encouraging in the least. _… Thanks,_ Yuuri remembered muttering. _Thanks for that._

Now, after dinner, alone on a balcony — there’d been something Viktor wanted to talk to Yuri about, alone — Yuuri turned the council over and over again in his thoughts, considered with new eyes this part of Viktor that was ruthless and cold. Yuuri had once been intimidated by Viktor’s reputation alone: the Northern Kingdom’s Prince of ice, all frozen strength and power. He was not so intimidated now. It was a reputation that lent itself to an interpretation of cruelty, and this was, if anything, the pure opposite of that: Viktor lending the strength of all of the courts he could command to loyalty to help people he did not know and had no reason whatsoever to risk his life for.

So even this, his cold determination, the brusque efficiency with which he and Yakov made decisions: even his hardest edges were admirable at their core; and Viktor had once promised everything he was to Yuuri, even this.

It was noble, and yet not beautiful, all at the same time. It was Viktor’s strength, and also Viktor’s promise of changing tides, usually steady, sometimes ferocious. Even Viktor’s cold determination belonged to him. Yuuri felt a flickering of the same possessiveness that had crept over him at Imbolc, had to hide a little bit of a smile, and suddenly there wasn’t even any point in that because Viktor had come back, had arms around his waist, was nuzzling into his neck.

In the morning they’d ride off to danger, which Yuuri decided he wasn’t going to think about.

“Are you —“

Viktor sounded like he was about to ask if Yuuri was _alright,_ and that meant talking. Talking was the very last thing Yuuri felt like doing after an entire day of listening to the council, standing now in the twilight with cold stars twinkling what he hoped were their blessings from so terribly far away. He had no desire to examine his own doubts, to be reminded of the uncertain future. Before Samhain he’d been comforted talking about the years that stretched out ahead of them, of the things they’d get to do _together._ The word itself was a miracle: not once had Yuuri allowed himself to imagine that someone might be willing to share in his suffering, and certainly not someone like Viktor. Then Viktor had done better: he’d sat on the threshold of Samhain with the power of life and death in his hands, and he’d chosen death because he wanted whatever Yuuri was enough to not mold him into something else, something easier to love, for his own benefit.

Now Yuuri was almost wishing they could be selfish, could leave the cauldron and the dragon and all of the leftover pain of the first age to other people, different ones. Viktor was brave and noble and cold; Yuuri was flickering doubt, a single candle in the middle of a thunderstorm.

He did not feel especially heroic.

What he wanted was to remember all of these facets of Viktor properly, to carry them with him into the danger they’d all agreed to face together. “No,” he said, pre-empting the question before it could finish. Yuuri turned around and cupped Viktor’s face in both of his hands, smoothed his thumb over the Prince’s high cheekbones. “But you knew that already,” he murmured, and before they could talk about it, Yuuri decided that he could still be selfish _now,_ tonight, at least: he could have that much.

He kissed Viktor deeply and without restraint.

 _Give me this much,_ he pleaded, whether with Viktor or the old gods, Yuuri did not know _. This is all I want._

Viktor obliged. The old gods were silent as they’d ever been, but he had Viktor, and that was enough.

 

\- - -

 

 _If you’re here to try to talk me out of it, don’t bother,_ Yuri had snapped at Viktor shortly after dinner, when his brother insisted on taking a walk. _I’m coming and that’s final._

Viktor shook his head, but Yuri recognized the sharpness of his gaze, blunt and assessing; braced himself for an order. _Do what you need to do to make sure you’re not a liability when we get there, Yura._

_What?_

_I’m not the only one who’d throw myself in front of danger to protect you,_ Viktor murmured, aloof, and before Yuri could hurl insults or curses or venom his way, he’d grabbed his brother by the chin, held on with a preternatural calm that the blonde hated when it was directed at him. _Think of Otabek._

He’d hurled a beam of light at Viktor’s retreating back after that, fuming, but the lucky bastard dodged, like he always did. Then Viktor stopped, halfway back to the villa, and looked back, briefly contemplative: … _it’s not your fault, Yura._

_What?_

_It’s not your fault._ Why these words had such an effect on Yuri he’d never know, but he ground his teeth and clenched his fists to distract himself from the traitorous prickling of his eyes. _You’ve been around some very hard people who’ve been very unforgiving to the world,_ Viktor thought, a hand on his chin. He was softer now, and for the life of him Yuri couldn’t figure out which one he preferred: the cold Viktor, telling him to make sure he didn’t cost them the party’s best guide, or this one, the brother with gentle eyes, who seemed to wish he didn’t have to say these things. _It makes sense that you’d want to take your time getting to proper magic given what it’s done to everyone you love. But don’t you think you’ve waited long enough to be what you really are?_

Then Viktor smiled that damnable, guarded smile of his, the one that wasn’t entirely sincere, and Yuri had thrown another ray of light at him for good riddance as he left. Now he sat alone on a rocky overhang that extended over part of the oasis, braiding streams of light as they fell through his fingers, and to say that he heard Otabek approach was only true because it was the heartbeat he detected, not the Ranger’s near-silent footfalls.

“You too, huh.” Otabek sat next to him, irritatingly silent, and when Yuri couldn’t stand it he looked over at the ban side, found himself the study of another round of scrutiny. A small muscle in Otabek’s cheek twitched tellingly and Yuri scowled. “What, you’re angry? Seriously?”

“… Getting yourself hurt for my sake is the opposite of courage, Yura.”

Yuri had been called many things before, but a coward had never been one of them, and in a blind rage he reached up, light pooling in his palm. He nearly reached to strike the ban side, might’ve even gone through with it, but Otabek caught his wrist, his own fingers coiled in shadows. It stung, this swirling darkness, and it occurred to Yuri that this was the first time either he or Otabek had reached for each other with the power to hurt, had acknowledged the dangerous duality between their two opposing forces.

Still. “Who said I was going to get hurt,” Yuri ground out, ignoring the sliver of pain in his wrist as he focused on the light he’d summoned, made it twine back around Otabek’s hand in return. The very idea of it stung: that Viktor, and now Otabek, thought he might wander out into the desert with them, lovesick and selfish, that he had nothing to offer them on his own merits.

_What have you ever done to make them think otherwise?_

_It’s not your fault, Yura._ Viktor’s voice.

_Not your fault._

_Not your fault._

_Not your fault._

_… but don’t you think you’ve waited long enough?_

The light in his hands grew stronger as Yuri glared at Otabek, waited for one of them to give up on this game they were playing. “I am not,” he said coldly, eyes narrowed, “ _your_ liability.” He thought back days, weeks, months, played Otabek’s own words back at him: _“What I want to say to you is this: what you have, Yuri, could never possibly be a thing like weakness.”_

It was Otabek who let go first, who looked at him for a long moment with an unreadable expression, and Otabek who stood up and left Yuri alone with his hollow victory and the rock he’d won all to himself, the sparse winnings of contest. This was what it was like, he thought, to win wars. He’d gotten a bruise and a rock and he still wanted to cry. It was, he reflected, rubbing at the angry marks on his wrist, their first fight. Did Viktor fight with Yuuri? It didn’t seem like it. He almost asked, but Viktor’s mind was very far away, and that meant he was preoccupied elsewhere. Yuri might’ve been young, inexperienced even, but he was not stupid: he knew precisely what with.

He glared up at the stars and summoned the unicorn over the lake, over and over and over again: as many times as it was going to take until he got it right.

_don’t you think you’ve waited long enough?_

_never possibly be a thing like weakness._

_It’s not your fault._

 

\- - -

 

In Shen-Osheth, Guang Hong finished telling the story in its entirety — at least to the extent which he knew — to Phichit, explanation enough for why they were currently packing bags and preparing for a ride out into the desert, which was a place nobody wanted to be, least of all Phichit. “… and that is why you’re going to pack a bag and head out with us into the desert,” he concluded finally.

Phichit had only this to say: “Yuuri better survive that dragon,” he grumbled, “because he and I are going to have words about how you’re _supposed to invite your friends to your wedding_ when he’s done.”

“All that,” said Guang Hong, shaking his head slightly, “… and you’re mad about the _handfasting_?”

“I’ve got a whole list,” Phichit promised ominously, and for a moment it was easy to forget that his familiar was the moon rabbit. It looked adorable until it wasn’t. He was one of their more talented mages, after all, with magic and exuberance in equal measure. “You don’t just accidentally get married to the future king of the world. These things have steps. That boy owes me _details_.”

 

\- - -

 

_Twelve days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age_

Otabek slept uneasily. Shortly before dawn he gave up all pretense of pretending to go back to sleep, rose, cast a considering glance back at the villa. Christophe would know all about how aes sidhe went about apologizing, but Christophe was probably also asleep with Rafael, and after the ordeal they’d been through it felt like something trivial to crawl upstairs to ask. Trivial and _young_ , like he was still the boy who’d been here all those years before, incapable of handling his own mistakes, and not a captain of the rangers about to lead a party off to handle a chaos dragon which happened to be nestled into the slope of a volcano.

No: this was something he needed to do on his own, and he went for a walk to shake off sleep, decided absently to gather some of the early desert wildflowers on the way. They were pretty, after all, and pretty things reminded him of Yuri just as often as harder, fiercer things did. Yuri could pretend all he wanted that he didn’t enjoy beautiful things but it didn’t change the facts: he’d walked in the parade at Lughnasadh carrying an arrangement of flowers, had braided them through his hair, had been irritatingly, distractingly _radiant_ in a way that he didn’t even seem to recognize he was capable of. Otabek had noticed because it was impossible not to notice. Just like it was impossible not to think of him now, wandering around the oasis like a lovesick idiot.

Yuri was going to take the damn flowers and he’d _like_ them, and then they were going to talk, because Otabek was not going to ride all the way to the cauldron with this hanging over his head.

He rounded the edge of the oasis, back to the rocky shore where they’d had the entire argument, and stopped in place, because there Yuri was: source of both his admiration and his irritation, all in one. The blonde was combing his fingers through the _very tangible_ mane of a unicorn, leaning drowsily against the magical horse, looking suspiciously like he’d not slept at all.

It was exasperating. Exactly as frustrating as the night before had been, when Yuri had looked at him with those gemstone-hard eyes, piercing, and thrown his own words back in his face as if challenging Otabek to actually prove he actually believed them this time.

Because that’s really what it had boiled down to. He had deserved that, and he’d nearly kissed Yuri for it, but for the smarting on his wrist, tangible reminder enough of the temper Yura had inherited from Yakov. Lilia had chosen not to spend the rest of her life tolerating earthquakes; Beka was going to do her one better, and head them off at the pass.

“Sleep well?” Otabek asked dryly, and Yuri looked up at him with narrow eyes, about to say something cutting and clever, no doubt, until he saw the bundle of wildflowers and hesitated for a moment.

“… You brought flowers?”

“I’m not good at apologies,” Otabek murmured curtly, and held them out as he crept closer, ignored the way Yuri’s fingers lingered for a moment over his as the aes sidhe accepted them. The drift of Yura’s eyelashes as he closed his eyes to smell them was harder to ignore, and so was his almost, not-quite smile. Otabek fixed his gaze out on the oasis, rippling ever so slightly in the morning wind. That was a better place to stare. Safer. “… I just want you to be safe,” he admitted.

“I can handle myself,” Yuri muttered. “I did alright in the desert the first time, and I kept Viktor alive with your help and we shouldn’t have even been able to do all that, and I’ve been trained my whole life, you know —“

“I do know.” He’d gotten a taste in Mosciren and again in Vaux Romandith, watching Yuri compete in the harvest games. The blonde was a menace carrying a sword and a shield, quick and lithe, fast enough that he’d given Otabek trouble every time they’d sparred for practice. Yuri was formidable. Now he was showing what he could do when he was determined, too; the unicorn in front of them both was proof enough of that. “It just. Those things hate you, and if something happens —“

“Let me be perfectly clear,” Yuri stated, and when Otabek looked back at him he was looking at the dread and awe that was one of the Northern princes, standing tall and resolute, with hard eyes and that same piercing look which had made Otabek want to kiss him, and kiss him thoroughly, the night before: “if you do anything besides your duty to this endeavor on my account I will _never_ forgive you.”

He felt himself smiling wryly. “Understood.” Otabek paused for a moment, made sure he’d held Yuri’s gaze. “However.”

“Yes?”

“If you ever lose your temper and raise a hand like that in my direction again —“ Yuri’s gaze faltered, and Otabek recognized the precise moment in which it gave way to remorse. “ _This_ will stop.”

“… I’m not good at apologies either.”

“Have you considered flowers?”

Yuri hesitated for a moment, and then stepped forward, touched the fading marks on Otabek’s wrist with a gentle brush of his fingers. He bore a similar sweep around his own hand; they’d each left the fight with a tangible reminder of what not to do again. “How do I make it up to you?”

“You ride with me on the wyvern, so I don’t have to watch you falling asleep on your horse.”

“Unicorn,” Yuri pointed out, raising his chin with a stubborn, proud smile. “Corporeal unicorn.”

“Corporeal unicorn,” agreed Otabek, and he turned his palm over to capture Yuri’s fingers, and as he leaned forward, intending to brush a kiss over the top of the prince’s forehead, Yuri stood up on his toes, and kissed him on the mouth, just left of center.

Between the two of them something uneasy settled a little bit further, this volatile thing Yuri wasn’t ready to put words to yet and which Otabek still didn’t entirely understand, but might come to, someday, in the fullness of time.

If they got so many days. For the first time, he found he could empathize with the aes sidhe’s addiction to time.

_Apology accepted._

 

\- - - 

 

They left for the cauldron: Rafael led the way on the ground, trailed by Christophe, and in the air Otabek’s great wyvern was flanked by three eagles, two of which bore riders: Mari and Seung-gil to the left, Viktor and Yuuri on the right. Makkachin flew at a slight distance, still wary and wild, and from time to time Viktor looked at her with quiet concern.

_You think she’ll be okay?_

_Beka says it’s us the revenants hate so much,_ Yuri replied back, half-asleep in the circle of Otabek’s arms and therefore lacking the typical biting reply. _They won’t come after her._

Yuuri felt Viktor hum a quiet assent to this idea, and sink further into his shoulders. They rode onwards in steady, miserable silence, as the environment grew increasingly hostile for Viktor. The last fresh water Yuuri’d seen had been at the oasis. Every time he woke and looked down it was to glance at an increasingly foreign landscape, shifting from the red rocks of the steppes into a different kind of stone, bleaker, where little grass was stubborn enough to grow and the trees even fewer. Otabek and Rafael moved through this dangerous place with ease and familiarity; it was their _home_ , wild and dangerous, and it made sense now, Otabek’s story about traveling early with the Rangers, how he’d gotten particularly adept at surviving, at stealth.

From time to time, usually on Rafael’s signal from the ground, Mari’s magic flickered around them, conjuring enough illusions to ensure they didn’t draw any unwanted attention. At the end of the first day’s ride — which had been overlong, lasting well past sunset — both Rafael and Christophe turned suddenly on their mounts below, directing the large cats up a steep and barely passable trail that led up to a circle of stone rocks. This promised high ground, and high ground meant a place to camp.

Otabek directed the wyvern to the ground, with the eagles following, and Yuri watched, idly curious, as he, Seung-gil, Rafael, and Christophe all made the same gesture as they dismounted, touching the press of their thumb and first finger to their foreheads and then to their lips as they entered the stone circle. It was curiously reminiscent of blowing a kiss, except more serious, strangely poignant. “… This was a sacred place once,” he explained quietly, glancing back to Yuri. “A long time ago.”

Yuri stretched and tried to shake weariness from his limbs, taking the time to walk around the circle of rocks. Indeed, they were no accident: once, these had been the foundations of something. Lilia’s words came back to haunt him: the ruins of a place that had burned, centuries before his time, because the cauldron had blown and help had not come soon enough. Christophe and Rafa broke out the rations, dried fruit and bread, apologetic. Now was not the time to chance a fire. They drew straws for watches, and it should’ve been strange to watch the way Christophe and Rafael curled up together, or the way Yuuri and Viktor did, like interloping on something private, but somehow here it wasn’t, and when it was Yuri’s turn to sleep he did so with his head against Otabek’s shoulder and an arm thrown over the ban side’s stomach, like maybe this time he’d be the one doing the shielding, the saving.

The second day was no different than the first except now Yuuri’s eyes were more focused; he’d been the first one to smell smoke. The sky grew ominous, a kind of sickly green that refused them rain, the clouds too high and too far off to be meaningful.

 _Guang Hong and Jean-Jacques’ parties should be beginning their forays now,_ Viktor reminded him, and, careful of their surroundings, Yuri leaned back to whisper for Otabek’s benefit:

“… are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

“If it wasn’t, I would not ride with you.”

Satisfied with that answer, Yuri offered a prayer to the old gods on behalf of their distant friends, even though Guang Hong was one of the strange Southrons, representing everything his father disliked, and Jean-Jacques was a proper idiot.

 _Vitya, how are you feeling?_ Yuuri’s voice intervened, now that the smell of smoke was a little more obvious, more than a passing trace. It was getting stronger, too, sharp and sulphuric. The family’s connection had been oddly quiet, except for periodic check-ins with Lilia and Yakov, who were using the Wayseeing stones to receive updates from lookouts in the other Kingdoms: from Minako and Kenjirou, who’d set up watches along the canyon; from Guang Hong’s parents, who sent messenger birds back and forth from Shen-Osheth to the mages in the desert.

Viktor was still Viktor enough to flash a momentary smirk and make a joke at his own expense: _I hate camping,_ he reminded them both, which meant _well enough, I’m okay._ Still his blue eyes had lost some of their sparkle and around their edges he looked a little bit grim.

That in and of itself meant nothing. He’d looked grim at the Council of the Princes, too. The cauldron loomed high and big on the horizon now, promising nothing good on the morrow: in the sickly light of the ugliest sunset he’d ever seen, all Yuuri saw was the little trail of smoke, and the cone of the mountain outlined in streaks of dying red and bronze from the falling sun. It made it all-too-easy to imagine the alternative: streaks of red-hot lava and a cloud of smoke that would last for months.

A vision of what could be. _But not yet,_ Lilia reminded him, giving Yuuri a bit of a start. That she’d checked on his thoughts at all was strange, a new thing he wasn’t accustomed to, and yet, motherly, too. _What did you expect?_

When they made camp on the second night, Otabek and Rafael insisted on watches in threes, and nobody objected. They drew straws for a second time, unluckily, and this left Yuri sitting up with Viktor and Seung-gil while four others slept. Everyone _except_ Yuuri had agreed he’d be getting a full night of rest, and, so outnumbered, the halfling had finally given in, reaching a compromise of sorts only because he’d gone to sleep cradled in Viktor’s arms while the prince stayed up, awake, protective.

 _Hey, Yura?_ Viktor’s gaze was distant, set off in the direction of the horizon where they both knew the cauldron was, even though at this hour of night it was little more than a cone of darker black at the edge of the earth.

_What._

_… I am glad you’re here,_ Viktor admitted finally, and Yuri turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. His brother looked tired, and perhaps the dehydration was beginning to get to him. _It feels right,_ he added, _to do this together._

In the morning, Christophe gathered everyone close. “Rafa and I debated this,” he said, quietly, as the python slithered into being over his shoulders, “and decided in favor of its merits. With your permission?”

“Permission for what?” Viktor asked, his voice low.

Christophe turned to look at him, hands brimming with shimmering violet. “Courage,” he said, resolutely.

 _Look at him, he doesn’t need to be any braver,_ Yuri nearly snapped, but to his great surprise his brother bowed his head, closed his eyes, and reached for his husband’s hand, a quiet reassurance against the one thing he’d not wanted to ever feel again. “We will need all the help we can get today.”

It was such a strange feeling, the first tendrils of Christophe’s magic. At first Yuri flinched, hostile, and then he found his thoughts settling, as though prompted to think of the things that made him feel brave. Lilia made him feel that way, sometimes, when she praised his work for its beauty or its intricacy. Viktor was worth being brave for, particularly when he spoke the truth, even when it hurt:

_Not your fault, Yura._

Otabek, who’d grown up here, among this scarred landscape and emerged from it steadfast and noble; Otabek was worth being brave for.

When he looked up again the glow of empathy magic was gone but he felt more sure, more ready, and when he glanced around at the rest of their assembly everyone looked more resolute: Rafael even flashed a brief, crooked grin. “We’ll have to fight our way up from here,” he murmured lowly, holding his arm out until a great owl materialized there, blinking wide yellow eyes at them all. “Best to make our way up on foot.”

“Let’s hope the others have done their part,” Seung-gil murmured, as the three-headed dog emerged at his feet.

“I like our chances,” quipped Viktor, though he did not summon the stag; would wait, like Yuri, until it was absolutely necessary. He understood the legacy they bore now. Mari’s tanuki wandered directly through his legs in retaliation for the joke while Yuuri tried and failed to stifle a brief, choked laugh.

“Vitya, that was a terrible pun.”

“Can’t let the circumstances change who we are,” Viktor replied mildly, and then he nodded towards the mountain that they needed to climb, now steadily simmering smoke. “Let’s go.”

 

\- - -

 

Rafael and Otabek led the way up the volcano’s slope, stopping every so often to send their guardians darting after revenants who threatened the climb: waves of black magic followed after Otabek’s wyvern, and something olive-toned shimmered with every pass of the great horned owl. Soon Mari and Christophe joined them, adding something purple and something smoke colored to the mix, and not a moment after that did Viktor finally draw his bow and begin to fire arrows.

It was going to be a very, very long climb.

_Try and save your magic, Yuuri. You’re going to need it._

This was like the sunset road but so much worse, Yuri decided, lighting up his shield as a spectre leapt down on them. It hissed and retreated from the white glow and from then on the secret was out: Viktor’s stag leapt ahead of them, followed swiftly by the white unicorn, and an answering roar told everyone that chaos was, in fact, home. Yuuri tensed, only to feel Seung-gil’s hand on his shoulder, the gesture brief. “They’re doing well,” said the reaper, whose dog turned to give chase to one of the creeping wraiths, though no magic flew through it. “Let’s continue.”

“Keep climbing,” Rafael insisted, and so they did: up black, sharp pieces of rock that bit into Yuuri’s hands as he scrambled up the slope. The ban side moved across the surface with more readiness, more familiarity, and more than once he accepted Seung-gil’s hand, or Rafael’s, or Otabek’s, as they darted up the volcano’s slope.

“Still with us, darling?” He heard Rafael call out for Christophe, who flashed a wry smile in return as he sent out another burst of violet magic, and forcibly sent a wraith flying backwards in freshly inspired terror. Magic was sentient, Lilia had said. Christophe could make these things _feel._

“Can’t be rid of me yet, I’m afraid.”

In the distance three other revenants were chasing an illusion of the stag, helpfully supplied by Mari, who kept making extra copies of the familiars of the two princes appear all over the mountain to draw off attackers. Otabek’s hand fell on Yuri’s back for a moment and a moment only, reassuring himself, perhaps, or Yuri, or them bot. Then they were swept back into the fight, leaning against each other’s backs as shadow and light danced across the rock, burst across a collection of spectres. “We’re almost there.”

“I know.” Yuri paused just long enough to wipe a bead of sweat off his forehead, which reminded him of how terribly hot it was, made him remember something else, too: where was Viktor?

Ahead, of course, an arm thrown over Yuuri’s shoulders. A faint orange glow settled around them both, and Yuri realized with a start that the halfling had begun redirecting heat away from Viktor, which must’ve meant he’d felt some wavering, some danger —

 _We’re going to be okay,_ Yuuri promised him suddenly, as he and Viktor and Seung-gil began to press on. _Take care of the others._ Seung-gil’s dog chased the revenants but never fully closed in on them, wouldn’t go so far as to deliver cold death. Still: he fought cleanly and quickly and as a guide he was almost as adept as either of the Rangers, had a good sense for where they were headed.

Then the roar sounded again, closer this time, and this time the shadow that flew overhead wasn’t any of Otabek’s, or even, the welcome power of the wyvern.

It was chaos. Chaos was here.

 

\- - -

 

The center of the fight was surprisingly still, something Viktor might’ve compared to the eye of a violent storm if he’d had the time or the energy to process it properly, to analyze. He did not. Around them in all directions broke bursts of magic like fireworks: the violet and sage that meant Christophe and Rafael were still on their feet; the bursts of black, grey, and white that assured him that the rest of his family had not yet given up, either.These dazzled and shifted but what mattered was Yuuri, who’d finally let his phoenix go. It flew around the dragon, dwarfed by comparison, an impossibility.

For how could something so small, no matter how bright it was, stand a chance against something so big and so broken?

But this was Yuuri, too, in a way; he defied the odds himself: improbable, easily discounted, underestimated. Yet Viktor knew firsthand that to watch him move was to watch poetry set into life, and the phoenix was a part of him: vermillion grace, darting in tight, golden spirals between the furious snap of jaws and the dangerous whip of the dragon’s tail. That it sometimes caught a few lucky breaks was no accident. Viktor had given up on any hope of influencing the radius of the fight, had left it wholly to their companions, reaching instead for his husband to wrap his arms around his chest and do what Yuuri had once done: offer up the remaining reserves of his magic, all of his good fortune.

_Vitya, whatever he’s going to do he needs to hurry up and do it. We can’t hold out too much longer._

“It’s so big,” Yuuri mumbled, fighting to keep his concentration up as silvery threads of magic wound around his torso, sank into him. “… I’m not sure —“

 _Oi._ Mari’s voice crackled across the bond. _Quit pretending like you’re ordinary, already._

Viktor, fighting off his exhaustion and the terrible, hot pull of this place, held on a little more firmly. _May these hands be blessed this day,_ he thought, pointedly. _May they always hold each other_. _May they have the strength to hang on during the storms of stress and the dark of disillusionment. May they remain tender and gentle as they nurture each other in their wondrous love. May they build a relationship founded in love, and rich in caring. May these hands be healer, protector, shelter, and guide for each other._

“You’re not alone,” he murmured, dizzy, willing to reach for one last wave of magic. _Everything that’s mine is yours. We’re all still here —_

Dimly, he heard his husband shout for Seung-gil, for Christophe; hardly recognized the sudden leap of the three-headed dog, surrounded by a darkness that was deeper than any of Otabek’s shadows, or the coiling of Christophe’s python, the final summoning of his own white stag.

Together silver and gold, black and purple came together like a radiant, incandescent wave:

 _Your time here is finished;_  insisted the reaper's magic, which Seung-gil would never have used on his own, without Yuuri's promises of rebirth.   
 _  
__Be at peace as you depart,_ Christophe thought, swiftly changing the emotional waves he cast from terror to serenity, long overdue in a place like this.   
  
Viktor felt strangely apologetic as his stag raced forward. The crimes of the first age had not been his, and yet ... _Fortune was not kind to you in this life,_ he thought.  _May the tides be kinder in the next._

“You’ve had too much of winter,” he barely heard Yuuri say, “it’s time for Spring.”

The brilliance of it all burst everywhere, broke out in a great circle among all of them; waves that radiated in all directions; a luminous glow that spread out over the cauldron as far as he could see, though the edge of his vision was quickly growing dim. The last thing Viktor saw before he passed out was another shadow overhead: smaller, coming through the high and sickly clouds which had begun to part in a streak of tangible sunlight. The last thing he heard was an eagle’s caw overhead; something strong and fierce, lifting him upwards.

 _... Makka...?_  
  
Darkness came, and with it, sweet, sweet relief.


	26. with wonder at having survived this far

 

_Nineteen days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age / 1 III Age_

Yuuri came to his senses slowly, recognizing two creeping but opposing sensations: a heavy exhaustion throughout his limbs and the deep satisfaction of regaining awareness after a long, steady rest. He blinked slowly, eyelids heavy with sleep, and tried to sit up on his elbows, registering aches in muscles he hadn’t realized he had. He groaned lowly, and got his bearings: the bed was comfortable, and someone had changed his clothes; the sleeping robes he wore were soft, grey silk. The room he was in was big and round, with carved wooden eaves that reached overhead and met in the center of a domed ceiling, with figures asleep in eight beds arranged in a circle throughout, and recognizable tapestries on the walls, each of these reflecting Ast Petyriel’s moon pines in different seasons.

He scanned each of the beds in turn: Mari on his right, an empty bed past hers, and then beyond: Christophe, Rafael, Otabek, Yuri, and finally Viktor, each of them adorned the way he was, and still, it seemed, asleep. and beyond her, Christophe, then Rafael, then Otabek, then Yuri, and finally Viktor, each of them resting in the same attire, selected for patients of the halls of healing.

“… You’ve been out of it for a while,” murmured a nearby voice, and Yuuri had to turn his head further to see who it was who sat in the chair next to his bed. There was Seung-gil, who looked only marginally better than he did, with the hellhound familiar obediently resting at his feet, each of its three heads resting in the ban side’s lap.

“What — what happened?” Talking hurt. Yuuri hadn’t recalled taking much physical damage in the fight at the cauldron, but he supposed this was how it felt to be dangerously spent, to have so much magic drained from the very core of his person. He considered trying to summon little flickers of fire to the tips of his fingers and decided against it. If speaking was painful, spellcasting was going to be worse. He hoped his expression did the rest of the talking. _How …?_

Seung-gil hesitated before he answered; not for lack of certainty, but because he lacked the right language to describe the radiant wave their magics had woven together to create: the way it had shimmered over the cauldron like the light of a sunrise, spread over the angry void of the dragon, and onto the revenants, and then bled through them until they were clear, _gone._ “Something like a resurrection,” he said quietly. Christophe had imposed peace and acceptance; Viktor had given them a fighting chance, and then Yuuri had asked for even his own magic, for the death to end the cursed fates of these leftovers of war. The phoenix had given the final word: he did not think they were gone forever.

Nor did he think they would return as they were, broken, bent.

“The eagles came,” added the ban side, unsmiling, though he was at ease. He’d used far less magic than anyone else, and he’d come to sooner, with enough wits about him to direct the eagles North. Seung-gil did not relish the idea of returning to the royal courts of the aes sidhe, but he knew well enough the reputation of Lilia’s healers, of Ast Petyriel’s promise of rest.

“Did the cauldron —?”

“By all accounts, no.”

Yuuri exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, not without a wince, and took a moment to look around the room. His friends looked clean and cared for; of all of them, Viktor looked the palest, and he was attended by a mage at his bedside, who reached periodically for a cloth, soaked it in a bowl of water nearby, and then pat his forehead with it.

“I’m told the High Prince is dehydrated,” Seung-gil noted, “but nonetheless expected to recover, along with all of the others.”

“… Seung-gil,” Yuuri asked quietly, already begging for a favor. “… can you help me get to him?”

“You can’t possibly be considering healing him in your —“

“No.” Yuuri was sure he didn’t have the magic for it. Already he felt like he might fall asleep again. “I just want to be close to him.”

Seung-gil fixed him with a dark, expressionless stare, but he obliged, and the few steps it took to get to Viktor’s bed were painful ones but they were worth it. “There’s barely even room,” the ban side murmured, pragmatic as ever, but he didn’t know _them,_ didn’t understand the way Yuuri fit so neatly when he was curled into Viktor’s side, when he carefully tangled their legs together. He took the wet washcloth gingerly from the nearby mage and then wrung it out, dribbling a few drops of water over Viktor’s chapped lips.

His brave, perfect prince.

“I suppose if I told you to move,” murmured an arch voice from the doorway, unimpressed, “you would be as stubborn as my son and decline?”

“Your majesty.” Lilia moved to check on Yuri first, sweeping the back of her palm over her son’s forehead, and with it a wave of emerald green magic. After a moment, she leaned over, pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“You didn’t answer me,” she noted.

Yuuri was too tired to even offer a wry smile. He decided to forego words. _You’re not wrong._

 _My stubborn sons,_ she thought back, moving to Viktor’s bedside next, and leaning over them both to press a kiss to her elder son’s forehead. _Nonetheless. The world is different today because of the courage of stubborn men._ “Rest,” she said, and leaned over Yuuri, and to his great surprise, he, too, became the recipient of one of these swift, cool kisses. “It is safe now.”

 

\- - -

 

_Twenty-one days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age / 1 III Age_

“Vitya, I think you’ve had more than enough beauty sleep.”

There were better ways to be woken up than the rumble of Yakov’s voice bouncing around his skull, and Viktor nearly said so, except his whole body felt heavy and unwieldy and thinking was — well, it wasn’t easy, but it was _easier._ He cracked one eye part of the way open, rewarded with a tousle of dark curls resting against his chest, _Yuuri,_ that meant Yuuri was okay, and Yakov’s voice meant they were home or somewhere close to home. It should not have been possible to fit so much fondness and relief into one body simultaneously but somehow Viktor managed it; gave a steady exhale and let his eyes slide sidelong to the King.

Yakov said nothing, though one corner of his mouth quirked somewhat, and he stood up. _Sit up,_ he commanded without real demand — in fact, he helped Viktor do so, propping him against the headboard with a care that it was sometimes hard to remember Yakov possessed. Wordlessly he poured a glass of water and handed it over.

Viktor didn’t realize how terribly thirsty he’d been until the first taste, and he knew he was home now; this was crisp and clear and reminded him of mountain runoff in the springtime. More alert now, he could recognize the hall of healing, the scattered cluster of beds, nearly all of them emptied and made now except for his own. Carefully, he swept his fingers through Yuuri’s hair. Yuuri’s breath came deep and even, and in his sleep he stirred a little, curled his fingers a little more possessively into the grey silk one of the healers must have outfitted them in upon their arrival.

_How did we …?_

_The reaper was able to guide the eagles to carry you back here,_ Yakov returned dryly. _Fortunately at least one of you remembered it also matters to be useful at the end of a fight._

Had it been a fight at the end, though? Viktor wasn’t sure. The radiance of that magic felt like it still haunted his dreams. He’d always been taught that to do battle was usually the result of ill-will, and yet this had felt different, like a strange, new release; a letting go; forgiveness.

A benediction. A blessing.

Yakov chuckled beside him. _It’s very old magic,_ the King thought. _What happened there, Vitya … you did well._

_That was all Yuuri._

_Would Yuuri have been able to do what he did without any of you?_

A typical Yakov question, asked in a not-so-typical Yakov tone. It forced Viktor to examine his answer carefully. _… No,_ he conceded, _but without his influence …_

_You would not have gone._

It wasn’t worth answering, but it was true: in distant lands far from Ast Petyriel or Mosciren, the cauldron might’ve erupted, and Viktor would have sat high and alone in the Northern courts, protected and isolated from the suffering of strangers.

Shameful. That’s what it was.

 _Nonetheless, you went._ Yakov pointed out, steady, unperturbed. _Lilia informs me it’s the dawning of a new age, this._

 _Is it?_ If anyone would know, it was Lilia, the last great loremaster, who still sometimes understood the messages sent by the distant stars. Viktor felt no different than he’d felt before, unchanged by this fact, and yet they’d just been talking about the ways in which everything that mattered was different.

 _Apparently,_ Yakov replied, and Viktor did not need to hear ‘that woman is all trouble, Vitya,’ to imagine it. He glanced at his father once more, wondering what else hung behind the single word, what it was that he’d missed, and on studying the ancient King’s face the truth slowly set in.

 _…. You’re leaving,_ Viktor realized suddenly. _You’re going to the havens._

 _Not immediately, my boy,_ words Yakov hadn’t used for him in years, … _but soon enough, I think._

It was curious, the effect hearing the confirmation had on him. Viktor had known for years that this moment was someday going to come, had prepared for it in every possible way. Long years before, in a life that felt like it belonged to someone else, Christophe’s parents had left for the havens, and the world had continued to spin in their absence, though with a glaring vacancy that he’d taken far too long to address.

Lilia had taught him everything there was to know about magic and Yakov had taught him everything there was to know about power and now all Viktor could think about was how terrible of a King he was going to be someday soon, someday imminent.

Yakov reached over and snapped in front of his face, cutting those thoughts short. “Don’t be ridiculous,” murmured the mountain King, “the two of you will be the stuff of legends.”

 _The two of us?_ Viktor’s thoughts drifted to his brother, and the answering snort and pointed stare from his father reminded him of the gentle heat of Yuuri, asleep in his arms.

 _Minako tells me you made quite a scene at Imbolc,_ Yakov added, bemused. _You’re the one who wanted to be married so badly, Vitya. Now you get to tell the rest of the waiting world about your consort…_

_You weren’t so impressed at the beginning, I seem to recall._

“I’ve seen what lengths you can go to now,” The King responded dryly. “It assuages certain concerns.” Then he smirked, if any expression on Yakov’s face could ever be called a smirk. _Your mother is telling Yura,_ he thought. _Your brother will also, I think, keep you from too much stupidity._ “… Better rest now, Viktor,” he said, and Viktor could almost hear some of his own cheek in his father’s voice. “Coronation to plan and all.”

Viktor groaned, which was enough to make Yuuri stir in his arms, and blink owlishly up at him.

“Vitya?”

In the span of miliseconds, Viktor forgot the conversation he’d been having entirely, though it would come back to him soon and often: there was no greater pleasure on earth than to have Yuuri in the circle of his arms, shaking off sleep, saying his name.

 

_\- - -_

 

_Twenty-four days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age / 1 III Age_

Perhaps of all of the buzz surrounding Ast Petyriel in the days after the Cauldron Event, nothing was quite so loud as a Southron mage storming into high street and then into Lilia’s council hall with very little regard for the general lethargy of those ensconced there, steadily recovering from the journey.

Phichit was a sight to see when he pointed firmly in Yuuri’s direction, scowling.

“ _You_. Explain yourself. This very instant.”

Viktor blinked once, then twice, and then, watching the rapid spread of Yuuri’s blush over the bridge of his nose and then his cheekbones, buried his laughter in an ill-disguised cough.

“You’re lucky you’re going to be the King someday,” Phichit grumbled, as his black eyes slid in Viktor’s direction, “otherwise I’d give you an earful about how you didn’t marry my friend properly.”

“Oh, please do,” Yuri encouraged, flashing a half-cocked, malicious grin, which Viktor promptly repaid in full:

“Your concerns are ill-informed,” he stated, managing to keep his tone perfectly serious, though his blue eyes danced with a renewed mischief that wasn’t to be trusted. Yuri seemed to recognize his mistake much too late, and even Yuuri’s squeak of protest couldn’t stop what came next. “I assure you, we were _very thorough._ ”

“Vitya!”

Later, Viktor gave them both a very wide berth, leaving Yuuri in the care of the friend he’d once traveled the wheel with as they exchanged stories: Phichit, who gave an embellished, sweeping account of the revenants the Southrons and Westerners had encountered in the desert; Yuuri, who finally went back to the very beginning, who confessed why he’d missed the last season of their pilgrimage together and then slowly filled in the pieces of the past year Phichit hadn’t been present to see. Phichit folded his legs up to his chest, rested his chin atop his knees, and studied Yuuri with a soft smile.

“You could have told me,” he insisted quietly, reaching for one of Yuuri’s hands. “I would have kept your secret.”

“I know.” And Yuuri did know. For all Phichit’s blind enthusiasm and spontaneity, he was tremendously loyal. “I just … I didn’t want to be a burden.”

“You could never be a burden, Yuuri.”

Except that was precisely what Yuuri had long assumed his magic, and by extension, himself would be. Then Viktor had blown into his life with hurricane force, the most beautiful blue eyes on earth, and a mouth that was made for kissing. “I know that now.”

“Still,” Phichit whistled, after a moment of companionable silence, “not a bad catch, as far as husbands go, Mr. Future King-Consort …”

“Don’t remind me,” Yuuri mumbled, feeling his face heat up anew. The idea of a formal introduction to the entire waiting world as Viktor’s spouse was terribly intimidating. How he’d managed to dance his way through Imbolc with lovebites all over Viktor’s throat without combusting was now something of a mystery.

Or maybe that had been the point of it: maybe he’d been combusting all along.

“Do you want anyone else to be Viktor’s husband?” Phichit asked archly, with mischief in his smile.

“No.” Yuuri’s vehemence no longer surprised him. Viktor was his, the same way the sun rose in the east and set in the west. It was strange that it should be  _just so,_ perhaps; odd, curious. Nonetheless he was adamant about it. This was the way of things. They _belonged_ and he forgot the rest.

“Guess you’re stuck with him then,” hummed Phichit, utterly unsympathetic to his plight. “King of the world and two castles. Must be terrible for you.”

Yuuri hit him with a pillow.

 

_\- - -_

 

_Thirty two days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age / 1 III Age_

Ultimately it was Lilia who settled both the matter of the coronation and the departure to the havens, by way of reminding Viktor that he hadn’t managed a proper courtship at all, and owed it to the courts of Shen-Osheth and Vaux Romandith to make introductions at least. After that she and Yakov would remain through Samhain, and wait with him for Yuuri’s return.

 _Besides,_ she’d reminded him archly, without a smile, though he could almost sense the shadow of one, _that way you can have the ceremony on Imbolc._

Imbolc.

If going through the motions of formal court traditions at Shen-Osheth at Beltane and Vaux Romandith for Lughnasadh meant that Viktor got to turn to Yuuri at Imbolc and put a crown on his consort’s head, he was already on board; might’ve been guilty of letting his mind wander back to that blaze of beauty, now reimagined with extra significance.

Soon they’d be going separate ways: Christophe and Rafael back to A’ve Palmera, where Christophe would stay for a short while before returning to Jean-Jacques at Vaux Romandith. Otabek intended to go back to the ranges for a time, and Seung-gil with him to visit his own family, though he’d promised to return by autumn. Yuri was not going with him, which both surprised and did not surprise Viktor. Whatever else he might’ve pretended, his younger brother was Lilia’s boy, and he was a little bit proud of the fact that he’d prioritized staying with his family over a courtship that now had more time than ever to bloom.

It was Yuri who shook Viktor out of his thoughts. Tonight they were settled around outside, having ridden out to the perfect white circle of Ast Petyriel’s moon pines, spread out on their backs while stargazing. For the first time, Viktor heard of the ban side names for the constellations he knew, and a few that he didn’t, listening to Christophe, Rafael, Otabek, and Yuri discuss them. Eventually, though, the heart woods fell into companionable silence.

Yuri was the one to shatter it with words, though not unpleasantly. “… It’s still a little hard to believe they’re going,” he murmured quietly, as though it was nearly only meant for Viktor.

“Yakov only wanted everyone to believe he’d be around forever,” quipped Christophe blithely, ignoring the dirty look the blond shot him. “Didn’t mean it was possible.”

“Maybe you can go with them,” Yuri threatened, though without menace. “Good riddance. Make Rafael the first ban side to see the havens.”

“No.” For a moment the one word hung above them, and it seemed Otabek had nothing further to add. He rolled onto his side, studying the blonde prince. “You’ll stay here, Christophe?” He asked, and let the aes sidhe’s grunt of assent speak for itself. “Like one of us.”

Yuri stared at the ranger for a long, long time. “… Would you come?”

“Do you think me worthy?”

 _You’ve always been worthy._ Yuri couldn’t say it, not yet, but he looked at Otabek for a long moment until the ban side offered a slight smile and a dip of his head that was more of a yes than it was a no. In the background, Rafael’s snort of amusement injected some levity into the moment, and Otabek promptly pegged him with a pinecone for it.

“What about you two lovebirds,” Christophe asked, ignoring the fact that these were choice words from a man whose head was presently pillowed onto his lover’s stomach. He glanced briefly at Viktor and Yuuri. “How’s it work, when you get to choose?”

“The havens are to the west,” Viktor murmured thoughtfully, looking up from where his chin had previously rest in the crown of Yuuri’s hair. The Halfling was pretending to sleep, though a subtle curve on his lips was too tell-tale; that and Viktor understood his thoughts, the drowsy way in which Yuuri was humming along to the conversation. “I think we’d get in a ship,” he said, “just before dawn.”

“… and sail east,” Yuuri finished, which made Yuri groan, because if they were already finishing each other’s sentences, another thousand years of it was far, far too many. “Into the sunrise.”

 

\- - -

 

_Beltane, 1018 II Age / 1 III Age_

Viktor’s impatience after a full day of ritual and ceremony was wearing thin, and Yuuri was completely unsurprised when Viktor dragged him away from the overlook, the bonfires, down the hill to a familiar field, the place they’d first danced.

It had only been a year ago, the first missteps in knitting together their bond. Viktor hooked an arm around his waist and dragged Yuuri close this time, with a look that was all perfect intent: this time they’d finish it. This time there’d be no waking up alone.

 

\- - -

 

_Nineteen days after Lughnasadh, 1018 II Age / 1 III Age_

“What are you writing?”

“I think you know, Vitya.”

“… You don’t have to do that.”

“Maybe not,” hummed Yuuri, who signed the bottom of this day’s letter, and folded it carefully. “But I want to.”

 

\- - -

 

_Samhain, 1018 II Age / 1 III Age_

It was not any easier the second time around: just a familiar landscape to be shattered in, a place Viktor already knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lied. one more. /bad at estimating things without proper outlines/
> 
> next ch: the first imbolc of the third age! and an epilogue with a few more loose ends to tie off, or, if you prefer: 99.5% fluff to the finish line ♡
> 
> i keep forgetting to mention that i've gotten some really delightful art for this fic, namely:
> 
> http://piyo13sdoodles.tumblr.com/post/158770043716/yuri-stepped-forward-towards-them-both-reaching  
> http://piyo13sdoodles.tumblr.com/post/157716290031/i-would-like-to-kiss-you-yuuri-katsuki-he  
> http://piyo13sdoodles.tumblr.com/post/157685481206/the-erstwhile-prince-of-west-so-theres-this-like  
> https://ayabai.tumblr.com/post/158803923239/fanart-for-silver-splendour-a-flame-a-lovely  
> http://omtivi.tumblr.com/post/158802480615/halflingyuuri-and-his-phoenix-familiar-from-the  
> http://asteriesling.tumblr.com/post/158851990851/christophe-giacometti-former-prince-of-the-west


	27. the small white flower, the one word that will protect you

_The Day After Samhain, 1018 II Age / 1 III Age: The first Viktor letter_

> Yuuri,
> 
> I caught myself wondering earlier about where it is that you go when you’re gone.
> 
> (“Vitya, I’ve told you that I don’t know,” you’re going to say, but that’s not quite what I said, is it?)
> 
> It occurred to me in a wild and fragile sort of way that perhaps even there you might miss me too, that perhaps whatever world you’re in feels like this one does in the winter: incomplete, waiting with baited breath for what happens next. I don’t think I have your way with words, now that I’m looking at these pages, or maybe it’s that your loss is still a little too near and I don’t want to burden you with trying to really write what it is that it feels like when you’re gone. Perhaps the words don’t exist. If they don’t, I don’t want to create them.
> 
> Next year we’ll put these in a book, and in some future time, some future place, someone will stumble across this exchange and wonder how two people separated by this dying were still able to speak to each other across the impenetrable void.
> 
> They will remember us.
> 
> I love you. Do I say it enough? Does your soul still know it, when you’re not here?
> 
> It feels like it should. But there’s no certainty when you’re gone and I hardly know myself. In any case, I remain here and I am still
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Vitya

 

\- - -

 

_Imbolc, 2 III Age_

Glory had a measurable weight, and it was heavy.

It was in the use of the cardinal elements; the smoke, the press of Viktor’s bare feet into the earth, the conjured wind, the water sprinkled lightly over his head as he led the processional. It was in the oaths administered by Lilia, extracted from the eldest peers of each of the four Kingdoms:

_Here stands before you Viktor, who today becomes your King. You have traveled wide and far, from all corners of the earth, in homage and service, but will you promise him the same?_

Who turned to look at him, her gaze impassive as ever:

_As you seek to rule you must bear in mind the virtues of all of our elements, the cardinal blessings of the old gods. Will you recall the purity of the East, and look upon each day of your reign as a new opportunity, a new risen sun?_

_I will._

_Will you possess the ingenuity and passion of the South, and so always seek to generate light in dark places?_

_I will._

_Will you remember the gifts of the West, and keep an open heart, in strength and in weakness?_

_I will._

_And will you be for your people safety and security, like the strength of the North, and provide for them a stable home in which to flourish?_

_I will._

_Do you today promise to lead and govern your people according to the laws and customs of our kind?_

_I do._

_Will you, to your power, pursue law, justice, and mercy each in equal measure?_

_I shall. The things which I have promised I will perform, and I will keep._

_May these oaths we have sworn today keep you on your path, Viktor; be strong and of good courage; be also gentle, be just._

It was heavier when Yakov set the crown upon his head, passing it from his own onwards to his heir. The elven circlets were thin and light and this was no different: delicate, even, as it sat in Viktor’s silver hair. Lilia took the crown of the High Prince and passed it to Yuri. Still. These were promises he’d made, not altogether different from holding Yuuri’s hands as they handfasted, swearing with his whole being to do the right things.

Even the cloak on his shoulders felt soaked through.

Glory had a measurable weight, and it could be offset by the promises of his friends, taking a knee: of his brother, who gave homage with clear eyes and a straight face, his token scowl erased by the seriousness of the moment, by his fervor to be a help, a resource. Minako knelt with grace and dignity and made the same promise for her clan; Guang Hong’s parents came forward in concert. Jean-Jacques, who’d intimated as much before made his vows public now, and so smoothly that Viktor caught Christophe’s quick, momentary grin.

Glory was weightless when Yuuri stepped forward, still glowing with all of the excess that accompanied him in _Spring._ Yuuri whose cheeks were nearly as red as his cloak, whose eyes kept drifting downwards until Viktor tucked two fingers under his chin.

Yuuri who was life itself in all of its strange beauty, both humble and high.

Viktor felt a strange sense of pride as he turned from his father and reached for the circlet of the consort, newly forged, a brilliant rose gold:

“Here stands before you Yuuri …”

 

\- - -

 

It took much longer, this Imbolc, to escape the revelry; what with a high holy day to celebrate, and a coronation, and the adoration of a glowing public.

It was nearly dawn by the time Yuuri pushed him back into their bed and climbed over Viktor’s hips.

“I hope you realize I’m never going to call you King Viktor,” he mumbled against Viktor’s throat, tipsy on spring wine and heady with feeling.

“Thank the gods for that,” Viktor hummed back, plucking the crown off of Yuuri’s head to set on the sidetable, along with his own. “What will you call me?”

“You’re Viktor.”

_Just Viktor?_

“Mhmm,” Yuuri murmured, and _gods,_ Viktor loved it when he was drunk like this, possessive and delightfully handsy: “My Vitya.”

“Always,” he promised back, and decided that they’d waited for more than long enough.

 

\- - -

 

_The first full moon after Imbolc, 2 III Age_

> A PROCLAMATION FROM THE HIGH KING
> 
> On this eve, and with the full assent of the Princes of the four Kingdoms, we set forth the boundaries of a new domain, a fifth kingdom, extending from A’ve Palmera in the North to Southmost edge of the Southern desert, and from the Western edge of the great canyon of the East to the edge of the Steppes in the West.
> 
> This center kingdom is to be administered by the ban side, who have elected after conference to govern via rule of council instead of through the selection of a Prince. This council is formed of six of the ban side Rangers, three of each of the tribes, and an additional figure known to the ban side as the Reaper, who will enact local law and custom in the revised territory. In the first meet of this council, two representatives have been chosen to join the Council of Princes as advisors to the crown.
> 
> A’ve Palmera is henceforth recognized as the capital, and its wayseeing stone is ceded to the council of ban side. Furthermore, the crown has accepted the nominations of Otabek of the Northern Rangers and Rafael of the Southern for admission to the council.
> 
> No changes will be made to the ancient tradition of traversing the calendar wheel; however, evenings of the full moon are to be marked accordingly in all five kingdoms and celebrated with the same honor and ceremony with which we regard the passing of the sun.
> 
> \- V.I, 2 III.A

 

\- - -

 

(Yakov, who sighed heavily: “You did _what_?”

 

“I figured Otabek might someday need a dowry,” Viktor quipped, as though that alone could possibly be the reason for writing such an old wrong.)

 

\- - -

 

_Three weeks before Beltane, 2 III Age_

> A PROCLAMATION FROM THE HIGH KING
> 
> Concerning the matter of events at the Cauldron at the end of the second age:
> 
> The crown recognizes the responsibility of the rulers of the aes sidhe to amend, in so much as they may, scars that remain in this world from the war of the first age. In order to accomplish this aim, we henceforth establish the tradition of BENEDICTION; whereupon a fellowship of mages will be sent into the ranges of the Center Kingdom to seek to bring relief to the cursed revenants of the first age.
> 
> Fellowships will travel every ten years to accomplish this purpose until every revenant is freed; they will consist of mixed parties of volunteers, always including but not limited to the King himself, the King-consort, the Steward of A’ve Palmera, and the Reaper of the ban side, or any others who find themselves in possession of the magics of fortune, life, emotion, or death and who therefore can learn to administer the benediction. Benediction is never to be performed without the full knowledge and consent of the council of the center kingdom; nor without the parties listed above: it is only in cooperation that these magics are effective for this purpose, never alone.
> 
> In addition, the crown recognizes a fresh tradition to occur the year following BENEDICTION; deemed JUBILEE. Jubilee will be celebrated in conjunction with Imbolc in Hasetsuil. The Princes of each Kingdom may select and nominate two of their people to seek healing and blessings at Jubilee from the King-consort so long as he is willing or able.
> 
> Nominations must be approved by the council of the ban side, particularly the Reaper, in so much as they should affirm the natural order of things. Once nominated, anyone who has subsequently been approved and who has received jubilee is ineligible to have life magic conferred upon him a second time.
> 
> Henceforth the road between Ast Petyriel and Hasetsuil is hereby named the Jubilee Road.
> 
> Any further conferences of life magic are at the sole discretion of the mage who carries the phoenix familiar and the ban side Reaper; when this occurs understand that it must always be as a gift, given freely, as most real blessings are: unasked for and wholly unexpected.
> 
> \- V.I, 2 III.A

 

_\- - -_

 

(“They will still come to him,” Seung-gil noted dispassionately at the Council of Princes, and Viktor glanced sidelong at Yuuri, whose head was bowed, his eyes closed. 

It was not a secret they could have kept forever.

“I know,” he said, “… but that’s what he has us for.”)

 

\- - -

 

_The day after Lughnasadh, Year of I Jubilee,12 III Age_

> A PROCLAMATION FROM THE HIGH KING
> 
> The King-father and King-mother departed the lands of the aes sidhe following the festival of Lughnasadh to seek the havens of hope in the far west.
> 
> In recognition of their centuries of service to this realm and its people the colors of Lilia of Ast Petyriel and Yakov of Mosciren are to be flown in all capitals for a period of thirty days, and beginning next year the mage college in Ast Petyriel will accept students of magic of all races and creeds with an interest in studying the most noble traditions and the highest arts of the aes sidhe _and_ the ban side; teachers will be selected from amongst the best mages in all of the Kingdoms to establish the finest library since the world’s first age.
> 
> Residence in Mosciren is now declared open to any citizen of the five kingdoms who wishes to reside under the protection of the Alcazar.
> 
> \- V.I, 12 III.A

 

\- - -

 

(“You’re lucky Father’s gone,” Yura speculated, the day after. “I think he’d un-coronate you if he knew you just opened the gates of Mosciren.”

“That’s what Mother’s for,” Viktor quipped, but it was Yuuri who looked thoughtful. _What is it?_

“I think he’s probably smiling,” Yuuri noted. “Yakov knows who you are, Vitya. He and Lilia know who they’ve left the world to. And what it means.”)

 

\- - -

 

_The Harvest Moon, Year of IV Jubilee, 52 III Age_

There were very few things that were funnier to Viktor than watching his younger brother suddenly reverted to a nervy, scowling youth at the prospect of finally _tying the knot_ with the ban side who’d been in his orbit for decades. “What are you nervous for, anyway, Yura? Haven’t you already been handfasted for decades?”

“We have _not.”_ Viktor knew that perfectly well. Otabek was a man of few words, generally speaking, but his presence in the family bond would never have been that silent. In some ways, Viktor was looking forward to it: today, finally, after _years,_ he was going to get another brother. He’d been more ready for it than Yuri ever had, something that reached back for the days when Otabek had flown Yuuri up to Mosciren, and so carried all of the things that were precious to Viktor.

He’d made his decision then.

Yuri had waited to be sure. To be completely certain. VIktor didn’t understand it but here they were nonetheless, with Yuuri patiently threading flowers that bloomed at night through the wheat colored gold of of Yuri’s hair. His husband had rested for most of the morning, conserving his energy for the evening’s festivities. Yuuri was never well, in autumn, not fully, but today he kept smiling, endured the antics of his lover and the nerves of his brother with the patience of a saint.

Yuri, on the other hand, was never going to qualify: “Shut up, Vitya.”

“So rude to your King,” Viktor huffed. “Anyway: I could, but then who’s going to give the bride away?”

“If you’re wondering why I asked your husband to officiate, instead of you, Viktor, this … _this right here_ is why.”

“As you should have,” Viktor murmured, and he leaned over, intending to press a kiss to the top of Yuuri’s head, except that Yuuri tilted his own chin up swiftly, and captured his mouth instead.

The press of his lips was short and soft; harvest season was always like this, gentle and receding. “… I think he knows more about love than anyone,” Viktor said fondly, and marveled that even now, he could still make Yuuri blush.

 

\- - -

 

_Three weeks and four days after Imbolc, 89 III Age_

“We’ve received interesting reports,” Rafael noted amidst the convening of the Prince’s council, something Viktor had put into regular practice instead of executed only in emergencies and with urgency. “For years now there’s been murmurings that the magicks of the ban side might return, as the revenants are released back into the cycle, but …”

“Yes?”

“There’s a girl in Shen-Osheth, a human with ordinary parents, her father’s a sailor, completely overwhelmed …”

“It would appear she has entropy magic,” Otabek added, with a subtle smile.

“Chaos?”

“Chaos.”

“Great,” quipped Viktor, and he looked through the stone for Rafael and Christophe. “So when are you two adopting?” He inquired idly, and gestured over to Otabek. “I’m given to understand you’ve already raised the one hellion, so …”

 _Hellion?_ Yura challenged wryly.

 _He’d have to be,_ Viktor joked with an unrepentant grin, mirrored a little bit in Otabek’s idle smirk. _After all, he married you._

Rafael’s broad smile and Christophe’s sputter were _so_ worth it.

 

\- - -

 

_A week and four days after Imbolc, Year of XCIV Jubilee, 102 IV Age_

“… and so they adopted me,” noted the fire mage in the college of Ast Petyriel, a pretty young woman who didn’t have Viktor’s silver hair or Yuuri’s brown eyes but who recalled them in her mannerisms, in the gentle playfulness of her humor or in the way she treated old books stored in this very specific part of the library with such gentleness and care.

In the nobility with which she carried herself; the fourth age’s _High Queen,_ a halfling, the phoenix _._

They were not magic books, these; they were the love letters of her fathers, recorded Samhain after Samhain; a record of every winter season and a retelling of the end of the second age, the start of the third, and everything thereafter. “… They’d been waiting, they said, for someone with the right sort of fire magic, someone who might be able to do what my father did.”

“We always read about the golden reign,” one student said, in awe, “About what Viktor did to restore the central Kingdom, and Jubilee …”

“My father didn’t do that on his own,” she corrected with a soft smile. “He was very clear that he did not want the credit.”

“What were they like?” Asked another student, a ban side child who looked up at her with bright, inquisitive eyes even as darkness sparkled on his fingertips. It was beautiful, elusive magic, and sometimes it made her think of her Uncle and his mighty shadow wyvern, the years she’d gotten to fly carried on those big dark wings before he and Yura had left for the havens. The first ban side to serve on the Council of Princes, and the first to seek out the havens of hope.

“… They were just like the stories,” she said, with a heart full of hope and brimming, this time of year, with _so much life,_ the joy of the phoenix. “But even better.”

“Better?”

“Because they were real,” said her husband, who let cool fingers drift over her shoulder. She turned to look up at him, the ban side who’d inherited the opposite mantle after Viktor and Yuuri sailed into an Imbolc sunrise, after Seung-gil’s magic one day subsided. The King-consort, whose steps were still dogged by the darting shadow of a three-headed dog, nipping at his heels like death was also a puppy.

She held up the book in her lap with great care; it was terribly old, now, carefully preserved.

Love letters from the third year of the third age. “They loved each other even more than the letters suggest,” she murmured, and rested a hand between the reaper’s shoulderblades, leaned into the promise they made together: death and life, life and death.

The peace between these forces was now theirs to preserve.

“That was what made history.”

**Author's Note:**

> Different characters are from each of the kingdoms, and we'll eventually see all of them as people travel about. Magic in this world is a collection of different elemental forces; some of them good, some of them bad, and different people have different affinities for each. A combination of this natural affinity plus their own personality results in what guardian selects them; someone who's got the salamander, for example, is probably a fire mage. These appear usually as shapes made out of light and color, but really powerful mages who have a lot of control over their own magic can make them completely corporeal. Familiars usually grant authority over one element type (or similar elements); something like heat or fire, for example, or Viktor's magic being firmly in the water category.
> 
> Some of these spirits, and this is super rare, come with a secondary ability, which is both a blessing and a curse. Anyone who uses two magics almost always pays a price. 
> 
> Ed. Note: at the request of a reader I'm revising word usage from 'totem' to use things like guardian, spirit, or familiar; you'll see updates in language as I go through and edit prior chapters.
> 
> Ed. Note #2: adding fanart links here with URLs:  
> <http://piyo13sdoodles.tumblr.com/post/158770043716/yuri-stepped-forward-towards-them-both-reaching>  
> <http://piyo13sdoodles.tumblr.com/post/157716290031/i-would-like-to-kiss-you-yuuri-katsuki-he>  
> <http://piyo13sdoodles.tumblr.com/post/157685481206/the-erstwhile-prince-of-west-so-theres-this-like>  
> <https://ayabai.tumblr.com/post/158803923239/fanart-for-silver-splendour-a-flame-a-lovely>  
> <http://omtivi.tumblr.com/post/158802480615/halflingyuuri-and-his-phoenix-familiar-from-the>  
> <http://asteriesling.tumblr.com/post/158851990851/christophe-giacometti-former-prince-of-the-west>


End file.
